Resynthesis
by SupcommMonroee
Summary: "Look into the shadows you cast, Revan. Can you even bear to do it?" - New prologue. Full rewrite and new chapters almost ready to post.
1. Hello? Is Anyone There?

Laserfire from the lower catwalks was growing more accurate. Clearly the gunner had found his marks and was dialing in for the kill. It was the din of fire all around – of its scattering, its misses, flying over and between heads, and all the much more terrible success when it wetly hit home against the meager fortification that was burning flesh.

"Contact from below!" Coriff yelled, and urged his lumbering Onderonian gunner into action. Smoke filled the engineering spaces from the keel void decks all the way to the upper hull. He'd never smelled a damaged hyperdrive before, and now Coriff had learned it was a gnashing scent like oil and guts cooking in a pan. The bitterness and the repulsive heat burned the whole inside of his face even through the helmet.

There went another squad from the security detachment. Fresh meat for the grinder, sent forward with only the hope that their tactical mass, their meat, could reinforce the other four and clog the blades of the man-eating violence down below.

"Besh Squad! On me, we're going down!" Coriff's shouting over the comms, the riot of battle, he lunged for the ladderway down until the pull of his left hand reminded him – crushed around the collar of his fallen marksman, half of a face dangling from a chunk of helmet. "Where's my medic?"

A duro ran to his side, moving in a low crouch through the smoke of the billowing inferno, the vaporized guts of the reactor and the stuttering hyperdrive. She pushed Coriff's hand away and dragged Diardo off into the next compartment.

"Besh Squad, on me! Lieutenant Azut! Where are you?"

In the haze the two men nearly collided. "Bannick," the sergeant heard, muffled behind two helmets. Lieutenant Azut slapped the side of his helmet and then tilted his chin up, his chest swelling – taking one last good breath. He threw his helmet over the side into the chaos below. Laserfire sparked the bulkhead just beside them.

"Bannick! I'm taking the men down. You and Troond, the both of you stay up here, watch the DC crew! No way we're getting out of here alive if you don't!"

"Sir. I advise…" he said, recited so many times before.

"Advise me shit. Watch the DC crew gunny, or else I'll court-martial you in hell!"

Gunnery Sergeant Coriff Bannick snapped to attention. "Sir!"

And there his boys went. Two dozen Republic Marine Commandos descending into the fire. A fire which made its own weather, its own currents, and obscured or illumined scenes on six decks of catwalks in a random poetry. Beams of Sith blades rose and fell, punctuated by the death screams of their victims cut apart from their bodies, helpless. Blue and red bursts of light colored the pooling smoke, showing in a rough way the push-and-pull motion of the battle for engineering. They were losing, and it wouldn't be long now.

"Engineer, what's your name?" Coriff demanded. The only one with an officer's color flash was hunched in the cavernous opening of the coolant main feed face. Beside him, two junior ratings grappled with jammed-up coolant waterfalling out from the feeder and into the lower decks. It was the only spot of tolerable heat he had felt in the whole compartment – maybe the deluge was like their very life blood dripping away, but at least it had quenched some of the fires directly below.

"Ulgo. Ensign Ul-"

"Ensign Ulgo, what's the timeline here sir? We're losing this compartment and the whole ship with it. Where's the blockage?"

"It's the kriffing… it's the damned feed pumps, and the main cycle won't spool up to impart motion, either. I'm servicing it as best we can, I just need time!"

"You don't have any time! We need-"

The ship suddenly rocked as if the hand of a leviathan grabbed the cruiser and shook her whole. The screeching of metal on metal, and the earthquakes of collapsing machinery followed – the unmistakable feeling of hull moving one way and not returning to place.

Light poured in from the Taris star. Above them, a rip in the armor plating as wide as a man and running the length of half the compartment. A Sith heavy cruiser seemingly rumbled overhead, vibrating as if there were no vacuum and the two ships were connected. Its mass drivers cocked out of the reload position, and the double and quad turbolaser barbettes bared, like the teeth of a great beast about to kill his prey.

Coriff was on his back, suddenly. The _Endar Spire_ ripped open a little further. He watched, as green flooded over the dorsal charging course of the enemy cruiser. It pooled in the focusing bulb. The emitter glowed. Coriff felt as though it were pointed directly at him. He reached for his throat. There was a rough edge of metal and he did not know where his skin had gone. His breath! He couldn't breathe. He felt hot exhalations from his lungs against the hovering pads of his gloves.

The light stared down at him. The spinal beam was charged, and its course was plotted. It shined down. Heaven's blade cleaved, and left _Endar Spire_ as only many motes of ashes cast in the light of an Outer Rim sun.

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The light had grown in the span of one, eternal moment, from a blinding light to one that was pure suffering to behold, and like the player rising on the E string it continued to rise, far beyond the moment Coriff imagined it could not rise anymore, and then it rose, and rose, until the blinding, deafening darkness returned.

He lay back on some sort of hard panel, and marveled to himself, admitting that he had always been curious what it was like to die. Of course, he could not hear or think this thought, yet he perceived it nonetheless, like the whisper of a spectator, someone who viewed the game of his life as an entertained advocate. Skinless, his skin crawled. Fleshless, his flesh ran cold.

"Where am I?"

His voice came back to him a split-second delayed, echoed from all around as if a gallery had said it and not himself. He saw everything – but in doing so he saw nothing. He could not look down or up or left or right or appraise himself, or see if he had a mouth or any faculties with which he could even speak!

And then, in a moment, he was a vessel of flesh once again, and perhaps realized how right his question was. He lay, uniformed but unwounded upon the edge of a frame of hull paneling, drifting in a sea of black void, or not moving at all, for there was no relativity to speak of.

And across from him was a man lying back on charred stone from a dead world. His body was shrouded in robes and his face occluded behind a red and black mask. A spear lined with ancient words carved and embossed with red into its haft was half-buried in his chest.

"You… you're…"

It was the mask and robes of Darth Revan, the Sith master himself, and first traitor to the Republic. Coriff nearly said "you're dead" until he recalled the dark and tragic irony of pointing such a thing out. Of course he was dead.

"Coriff. Our time is very short. You must… listen to my words," Revan whispered. Although he was tens of feet away on his rock, the words were strong and slumbering and clear into Coriff's own ear as if he lay beside the man in that instant. Each syllable, every consonant was pillowed and raspy, a story told by old men.

"No. No, I won't," he said, although he knew that he would.

"Look at me," said Revan. A slow hand drew to his face and lifted the mask, laying it gently on the ground beside him. Brown eyes – Coriff's own – stared at him. It was _his_ face, his _very own_ face, nose, and mouth, and… all the details he prayed in a split-second would be different, were not. Death had put a mirror in front of him.

"Now, watch."

Around them in all directions the sphere of blackness was perforated with dots of light as though a thousand eyes had opened, each one drilling its own gaze into Coriff's.

"And now… watch again," Revan said. Coriff looked around unsure, until he noticed a small cluster of darkness. It was growing; the stars around it were blinking out of the sky. The envelope of shadow was fast swallowing the lights. "All the dawn stars are burning away, Coriff. He winnows all possible futures, save _one_. It is you."

"No, no no…" Coriff muttered. Where was the cruiser? Where was his body? Where was Taris, and the vapor of ash in space that he should be? Was he one with the Force? This was not death. It was something far worse. He scrambled for an instrument, anything to hasten him on his journey to completion, away from this betwixt-state. "You're just an illusion! This is a dream! My brain… my brain is flooding with chemicals."

Revan continued on, knowing that Coriff would silence himself, as though he could not here the fearful ramblings. "What we share is a dauntless spirit. Beyond linear time, I feel you… as you no doubt have felt me, like a phantom limb curled around your heart, or a palm of wind in a closed room."

"Y-you're Revan. You're _Revan_. I'm Coriff, I'm not-"

"Paranoid schizophrenia. Temporal lobe epilepsy. The Force. A gut feeling. Sometimes nothing at all, but always, it has been us, it has been _you_: Revan. I… we… you have paid forward everything we can. The rules have changed. The wheels of time are shrieking back into motion. _Change_, Coriff. Everything must _change_ this time!"

All of the lights were gone, and out from the maw of blackness Coriff felt a singular gaze, and he felt a prey's terror, greater than any he had felt before in his life. Every thought was flavored out of pure fear, utter revulsion, the immutable instinct to flight. Yet he could not move. The flesh around his sight was nothing more than a vessel for his understanding – it was his mind within the carnivore's view, not his body.

"You are the axis around which the past, present, and future will turn. You are the heart of a power we have never comprehended. We have never understood… perhaps… or we have not, until it was too late."

Coriff felt Revan's hands on his face, and he felt that their minds must have then occupied the same point, bottled into the smallest available space by the oppressive march of the black maw.

"There have been a thousand thousand Revans! _Each_ like me, _each_ one a stronger evolution of the same system, _each_ one a failure evermore so than the last. And now, the futures that kindle in the hearth of night are but one, lone ember. You."

"What are you talking about? What are _we_?"

"A nothing in relation to infinity. All in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all, and infinitely far from understanding either. That is what we are, and what we have always been. But you are the germ… of a fantasy. Images unimagined, immune to holocide. Truly, utterly, _completely_ unpredictable. Nobody will see you coming. Not we… not him."

He felt the knocking terror. The rustling bushes. Crackling bone. The footsteps in the night, behind him, everywhere behind him at once.

"But what… but what is-"

"Do _not_!" Revan said without whispering, which to Coriff was like a roar. "Do not consider, do not think, only _listen_. If you think on this, you will be trapped here with me, for however long eternity has left."

The distance between them grew. The rock was floating away. Blood pooled beneath Revan's chest and drained into the stones.

"If this is true… what do I need to do?"

"Let us turn your course. All of you, breathing into your sail, one last time. One final chance…" Revan's head fell back. It lay against the rock. His mind was too weak to raise it again. "It's so cold now. One last ember… has to set it all alight again."

The lights were returning in small clusters, raging, fighting against the expanse of night.

Faintly, on the wind, carried Revan's voice. "The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining. All this was only unillumined cosmic water…"

Until Coriff Bannick was, again, aboard the _Endar Spire_.

And all fate wheeled around a new axis.


	2. Endar Spire Part 1

Boots clacked together precise and uniform. Their echo bounced between the hangar bulkheads until they were drowned out by the thundering voices of each squad leader issuing customary reports to the platoon sergeant. He received the last perfunctory confirmation from the fourth squad, and wheeled about on his heels a beat later to face the lieutenant.

"Gundark Platoon, twenty-five men on deck, twenty-five men on hand. Good morning sir," the platoon sergeant barked, his crisp salute the official garnish on top of their standard ritual.

"Good morning," Lieutenant Azut sighed, his salute coming up and down in a nervous flash. "Are we all ready for inspection?"

"As we'll ever be, boss. We're in top form. If Malak himself broke through that security door right now…" the platoon sergeant paused dramatically. "Well… he would be _extremely_ impressed with our boot polish."

Lieutenant Azut didn't laugh, but he frowned a bit less. Anything that eased the tension off of the political aspects of the job was a victory, not to mention Azut's particular hatred for tricks and spectacle of this nature.

Not to mention it was inspection day with their new Jedi commander.

"Well, if you think we're ready, I'll take it. Let's hope she's impressed. I was with the captain giving her a tour and I haven't seen that icy mug of hers shift all day…" Azut patted his subordinate on the arm in the style of a conspirator implicating a partner in some grand charade. "Okay. Gunnery Sergeant Coriff Bannick, carry out the plan of the day. Let's impress."

Azut about-faced and took three steps forward to stand in line with all the other department heads and officers prestigious enough to earn a Jedi Handshake, which among enlisted soldiers was not a power held in significant esteem, but one which the officers revered – moreso the officers who had a long career in mind – on par with lightning or battle meditation. Bannick ordered the platoon of Republic Naval Commandos to parade rest while they waited for their mission commander – and charge – to make her appearance. Befitting his station as platoon sergeant, Bannick took up his post at the rear of the platoon.

Over on the far left bulkhead, the hatch lock disengaged and hissed open. Coriff peered over at the newcomers, careful not to move his head from its picture perfect "eyes forward" position. Granted, at the rear of the formation and on the far side of the hangar the odds of being spotted were low. That said, Coriff felt he could've done cartwheels through the hangar and escape the notice of the officers and sailors assembled anyhow, given just how much the air became sickly thin as it draped pallor and pressure on all concerned.

In her short time aboard, Commander Shan seemed to have cultivated the type of reputation that loads dire, career-related stress on the shoulders of anyone unfortunate enough to be in the same compartment as her. As the provisional "fleet commander" of a squadron which so far counted the _Endar Spire_ as its only constituent, she saw fit to impose the highest standards – and highest associated criticisms when such standards could not be met. Naturally, those men who encountered her reported she was nothing less than the schematic of a perfect Jedi. Any time she didn't spend inspecting spaces, critiquing the conduct of her mission, and training was spent in isolated meditation. Well, that was supposed to be her talent anyhow. Some kind of Jedi witchcraft to turn battles in the Republic's favor.

And Fleet Forces Command had laid out in the most certain terms imaginable that the _Endar Spire_ would be her fiefdom for the duration of her mission to link up with the _Indomitable_'s battlegroup somewhere on the Tarisian Span, since it had been driven off of its garrison position at Botajef. They were bereft of a commander ever since their admiral saw fit to ram a Sith _Interdictor_-class with his command ship to buy time for his own fleet to escape, and those were supposedly the size of the boots Commander Shan was being tasked to fill.

No doubt about it. This was the Republic's greatest weapon walking into the hangar, and Coriff figured he could do backflips _and_ cartwheels without being spotted at that rate. He wondered if he could roll fast enough to get away from a Jedi.

"_ENDAR SPIRE_, ATTEN-HUT!"

Every pair of boots came together at an instant, heels slapping together and toes (or toe equivalents) jutting off at textbook forty-five degree angles. Master Chief Bulgran, a Corellian with more than a few chips on his shoulder, executed an about-face and reported in to the captain, who in turn reported all hands ready for inspection to his mission commander. Coriff could just barely make them out on the other side of the hangar, but their speech was clearly audible over the dead silence and dull hum of the shields.

"…all ready for you to inspect, Commander Shan."

"Didn't he just tell me?" the Jedi quipped. "Your sailor already told us as much."

"I-I… this is standard fleet procedure, ma'am, I meant no-"

"It is no matter. It merely strikes me as a waste of time. Let us proceed with the inspection."

Gundark Platoon were new arrivals just as much as Bastila was, and Coriff felt no special kinship towards their exceptionally average captain, but even he felt his cheeks heat up in secondhand embarrassment at the public castration Bastila just delivered. At their rehearsal formations before the Jedi came aboard, the captain wore his uniform spectacularly appointed with every little medal and ribbon he was authorized to wear. By the time of their last rehearsal his eyes had watched the crew and embarked troops greedily, like a man regarding the precious currency that would purchase him his dreams.

After hearing that exchange, Coriff already knew there was no limit to how low the captain would grovel to earn back her favor, if he had ever truly possessed it in the first place. In fact, he had probably embarrassed the ship and the Republic Navy already in supplicating for her approval. Coriff had to fight the urge to shake his head.

Commander Shan, with chin raised aristocratically and both hands folded primly behind her back, led the captain, executive officer, and Master Chief Bulgran down the line. At each formation she released one hand to shake that of the senior officer of the division in question – two shakes and a nod each, no more no less. And… then the rest of the division's officers. And the senior-most enlisted sailor. First stop was bridge control, then electronics, gunnery, engineering, supply, medical…

Coriff stifled a groan. What was there to inspect? Uniforms? Were the Jedi really so lost after Revan's betrayal that they were locking themselves up in the Temple to memorize Republic Navy uniform regulations? He glanced down at the name placard on his dress red-and-blacks. A perfect quarter inch above the right breast – as always – and pinned against a thin strip of durasheet on the inside of the shirt to keep it from budging. A part of him wished he had moved it down to an eighth of an inch, or maybe up to half, just to see if the Jedi's inspection really was anything more than indulging in the near-endless powers the Republic saw fit to furnish her.

Next came deck department, maintenance and material, navigations, ops, reactor, and combat systems…

And suddenly, the Jedi was at Coriff's end of the hangar. She wrapped up the pleasantries with combat division and stepped over with a sort of performative grace directly in front of Lieutenant Azut. She offered her hand, only that now it crept forward slowly, her once neutral function now absorbed in glacial, furrowed stare ahead. What had Azut done to upset her?

"Lieutenant Azut, ma'am… It's uhh… a pleasure. This is Gundark Platoon, we'll be responsible for your… safety."

"Yes, I'm sure," she droned.

What was going on? Was she going to be just as pissed about Coriff? The senior enlisted man looked at her, preparing to receive the venerated Jedi Handshake himself. But when he caught her eyes, there was a flash of… confusion? Disdain? And in an instant she turned towards the captain, thanking him for assembling his personnel for review and executing a rapid exit through the right side hatch, a confused sycophant in hot pursuit.

Now Coriff was left wondering what _he_ did wrong. She had appeared upset with Azut, but the way she glanced at him, just for a moment…

"Alright! Good show, crew! Division officers and department heads, back to your workcenters. We're shoving off for Taris in an hour!"

"Aye, Master Chief!"

There was no climax or ceremony for that inspection, but dismissal back to their spaces. Azut handed the men over to Coriff, who led his squads through the sentient traffic jam back to their platoon bay. There, they rid themselves of their dress uniforms at maximum speed, stripping down to their blue and orange one-piece underwear.

The men were quickly taken with that peculiar intoxication which seizes professionals when they can be together again, in a federation of their own norms and understanding and perspectives. Like air from a dive tank they broke into chatter and discord now that they were released from the chafing pressure of high-stakes inspection. That their top two men had been raked with ocular gunfire was something benumbed to them, or entirely unnoticed.

"Don't get too comfortable kids, we're running kill houses today," Coriff barked. His announcement spurred a new cacophony of plasteel armor suits clattering from withdrawal out of their lockers.

"So what's the queen's big deal with calling inspections, huh? Is she a fucking admiral or something?" Corporal Palant spat.

Sergeant Vizvaal grappled with his black body glove, stumbling over a bench while trying to pull it over his legs. "Why don't you ask her? Wouldn't even be your worst idea this week."

"Fuck you, man," Palant waved a rude gesture back at his squadmate, "I only know one thing, and that's that we're clocking detail on _her_ Jedi ass all the way up the Tarisian Route with our-"

"Come on… cool it," Coriff warned. Palant spent an anxious beat chewing on the seconds between him and a lecture. Once the window had passed, he directed his industry back to passing his boots over his ankles, grateful to have teased the limit of decency with so few wounds to show for it.

"Maybe her battle meditation lets her sniff out whiners, Corporal. Maybe that's why she left so quick," Vizvaal confided in a mocking faux-hushed tone.

Coriff groaned. So they _had_ noticed. What wonders that would do for morale knowing just how precious few shits were given in return for being no less than sworn bodyguards.

"I wish you two wouldn't fight so much," Sergeant Troond breathed out, his voice that of a dejected parent, eyes locked on the far bulkhead in dreamy isolation.

"Come on, you know we're just fucking around. Me and Vizvaal?" Palant knocked on his partner's helmet. "Tighter than tight. _Carida_ tight. You know it's real, because somewhere under that duracrete skull of his, he cares."

"I know. I still don't like it." Troond tucked a distressed tan shawl into the neck of his body glove, thin enough not to disturb the eventual helmet seal.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that She hates sarcasm."

Troond shook his head. "The Warm Goddess gives her blessings to those who are brotherly, and who treat one another kindly. It's an injunction against sentient order you know," the Onderonian pointed a finger each at the two of them, "to be so vicious with your words."

"And as far as the Sith are concerned…"

"As far as the Sith are concerned? Anger in violence in self-defense is Her anger and violence."

Otaron, Besh Squad's leader and an impressively tall Duros, inspected the tacnet wires on the inside of his helmet. "Sounds like your chosen deity is giving us the all-clear to stack bodies, eh?"

"In so many words." Troond conceded, securing his own helmet with a satisfying _click_. "Do you think we'll get the chance? Commander Shan's the one who killed Revan after all."

"Oh! You mean, you think she'll be fighting _Sith_ when she's got her mind set on being the ship's resident dictator?"

Coriff tucked his helmet under his right arm, for the moment focused on organizing the day's activities on his datapad. His reflection stared back in triplicate through the cracks and myriad scratches on its well-abused screen. All things considered, it held up well for six months of rough use.

Lieutenant Azut entered wordlessly. The platoon dynamic in most Naval Commando teams was tight enough that the hallowed institution of official authority wouldn't shatter if every member didn't jump instantly to attention, so long as they were behind closed doors. Sometimes other line officers noticed and lodged a complaint. They would've never tolerated their gunners or technicians having such a casual disposition towards them.

"Cut her some slack," Coriff said, scrolling through personnel records on the pad, "Commander Shan's a legend. Think of all the green officers you've met who get shoved into their first command with nothing but the legal authority and cute little collar pins backing them up. We've all seen it."

"Present company excluded?" Azut chuckled. He pulled out his own datapad, comparing notes with his top enlisted.

"I think three tours without getting fragged or losing your head to the red saber tango means you're on solid ground, boss." Coriff replied. "Step out?"

"Roger."

Coriff and Azut walked out of the platoon bay, leaning against the bulkhead right outside. Both of their datapads had squad records and training documents pulled up.

"I was thinking sixteen runs today. Four runs per squad, two rooms, nine targets, three friendlies."

Coriff's brow furrowed in visible confusion. Glancing over, his mind wavered on what transgression or failure had warranted sixteen runs. Were they negotiating punishment?

"I think that's a little much boss. They're at the razor's edge right now. Push them like it's a training cycle and every week we'll be risking an injury, fatigue… I don't think we should chance it. Let's keep them at a good spot."

Wrinkles in Azut's forehead carried their disappointment. "Good spot might be pushing it. We ought to be perfect for this. Just take a look."

He scrolled through the simulator scores for marksmanship since they had come aboard and taken over a void compartment near engineering as their makeshift killhouse. All four squads were more or less at the same level: off by a few hairs on nearly every single shot.

"They're loose. I don't care if the VIP is the one who put Revan in his grave, if we're playing guard hound for the Republic's superweapon I want every single one of our shooters on their best game. I would've thought-"

"Boss, let me stop you there. You were back up at ordnance school when we got stashed down at garrison, right?"

"Right…" Azut indulged with a faint thread of suspicion.

Coriff snapped his fingers. "Our sim shooters. That's when we picked this whole kit up. They fit real good on our blasters, but the laser they use to mark hits has some real poor corrective math."

"They mark high?"

"About this high…" Coriff pointed to the precision drop each squad appeared to be suffering. "I checked it all out myself. Didn't look right when we ran it first on Corulag so I spent a few days going between the sim and the real thing. Ena-Karau checked my math."

"He checked your math?" Azut snorted.

"Correction. Helped me carry blasters and told me I should do all the math."

The lieutenant laughed and patted his top man on the back of his chestplate.

"Alright. Four runs, one each."

The squads were thus assembled and marched through the ship towards the stern, their preferred weapons shouldered as their casual chatter carried on past the work crews from electrical division. Some, Coriff included, had not yet become re-accustomed to the taste of recycled air. It was the faintest bitter taste, at once both stifling yet overwhelmingly, scientifically pure. Coriff relished the slight change in flavor once his helmet clicked and sealed around his head. It was still ship air, but whatever happened to it in the gas filter between the intake and his mouth removed the active ingredient from what Coriff could only assume was a single bitter flavor packet mixed into the _Endar Spire_'s whole ventilation system.

Azut ran the drill with Aurek Squad, while Coriff participated with Besh. As was the popular system in the commandos, the platoon officer attached him or herself to the best performing squad, while the senior enlisted worked with the lowest performers. But at the level Gundark Platoon operated at, such differences were often the matter of a few points; just a few seconds slower as a group on a cross-country run, or a single shot just barely off of center. For the most part it came down to random chance, and all the factors which affected the minute aspects of performance from day to day. On this mission, being worst squad in Gundark Platoon meant nothing more than having their gunnery sergeant roll with them.

All told, their drills for the day took no more than two hours, from setup to teardown. They donated a few credits to the engineering division on the way out for some Corellian Brandy in return for the use of their spaces and locked up their gear in the platoon bay. It was already a busy day. Final preparation for inspection took a big chunk out of the whole ship's schedule, which fortunately wasn't too rough of an imposition on the commandos who had no other shipboard duties than to keep themselves ready for action.

As such, the ship's forward gym was their next stop. An unspoken arrangement with the bow dormitories gave them (mostly) free reign over the equipment and makeshift training ring for just under two hours a day. That was enough for the platoon to warm up as a group, do some team exercises, then split off for their lifts and cardio – if anyone had been on training detail and thus absent from morning cardio, that is.

In their exercise uniforms – tight black shirts and blue shorts – Gundark Platoon moved as one rowdy mass into the forward gym. Seeing that their unofficial time was unofficially up, most of the sailors and officers already there wrapped up their workouts and vacated in the next five or so minutes, while the commandos did their dynamic stretches in the corner. A handful of the ship's company remained, which was alright with Azut and Coriff – so long as _most_ of the mynocks cleared out. "Mynock," of course, was the go-to epithet for anyone in the Republic Navy who worked on ships and didn't carry a blaster daily. Or as most of the sailors would retort, those who worked on ships and were smart enough to get into a job where they wouldn't be getting shot at in the first place.

The platoon workout was light. Nothing more than some sprints on the treadmills and a pull-up contest. Azut earned his keep and took second place, which was as good as taking first when Corporal Kohayt from Dorn Squad never failed to beat the second-place score by at least ten each and every time since he had joined the platoon a year back.

Kohayt was thin; he barely filled out his armor, but every fiber and sinew of his body was tuned for high-performance action. In terms of bodyweight exercises he could probably put anyone in the Republic Navy to shame, and even for his lifts his performance far eclipsed his own meager size. He stepped into the training ring with a few other troopers, slapping his gloved hands together and jogging in place on the canvas. Coriff looked over and shot him a thumbs-up, which served double-duty as an encouragement and a warning not to hit anyone too hard.

Coriff stepped over to the cable row machine, which was occupied by an off-duty mynock with a tight crew-cut dyed a platinum white. The commando was just about to ask to work in when the sailor stood up and smiled.

"Just finished up. I was gonna work on some boxing, actually. Do you guys mind if I join your practice bouts?" The mynock asked casually, following Kohayt's first probing hits against Diardo with interest as his eyes darted between the two fighters.

"Only if you can keep up," Coriff smirked. "They can play rough sometimes."

"Let's see if I can!"

"Good sport."

Coriff warmed up with a lighter weight until he moved to his eight rep maximum. It had been a good day so far. He was well rested and had some stress to work out, and so he felt it might just be time to move up a little. After two hard sets at his max, he ticked the weight up just a little bit more.

He took a minute's rest, wiped his brow, and rolled his shoulders back. _One… two… three…_

"_Woah_!" A crowd at the other end of the gym roared in unison.

Coriff let go of the handles and whipped his head over. A scathing admonishment was ready for deployment in his throat when he turned around, expecting Kohayt to have just put someone on injury notice on their most important deployment yet.

But what he saw was Kohayt laid out on the canvas, his right glove probing a bloody nose while the unassuming platinum-haired sailor from just a moment ago leaned over him, a sportsmanlike arm offered in aid. After a few moments, Kohayt took it gratefully, patting the newcomer on the back and sputtering incoherently.

"Y-you're… you're pretty damn quick, man!"

"Awful kind of you to say. You feelin' good?" The sailor asked.

Kohayt chuckled, aware of just how outmatched he was. "I'll be good. Think I'll step out and put my nose back in place."

"Sure! Sure, well… does anyone else-"

"_TROOND!_" The platoon called out as one mass, again. All eyes went to the far left bulkhead, where the humble Onderonian looked up at the ring sheepishly from the flat bench.

"Well… alright. If it's just a friendly."

When Besh Squad's marksman stepped into the ring and gloved up, Coriff went back to his workout assuming that the issue was to be immediately settled. As gentle a spirit Sergeant Troond professed to be, he had a bit of a mean streak. Didn't help anyone that he was built like a tank.

Coriff figured that it was just the sort of temperament that might've pushed him into religion. _Four… five…_ Troond had always talked about getting into fights growing up as a kid in Iziz, usually with flushed cheeks and a wavering, shameful tone. But then he would light up and talk all about the mercy of the Warm Goddess, and how her eminent light and mercy could show even a ruffian like him how to live the right path. _Seven… eight!_

Whoever this mynock was, Coriff had no doubt he'd be unprepared for just what-

"_WOOOAH!_" The crowd roared again, redoubled in amazement.

Had the mynock really…?

When Coriff got up from the cable row machine and looked over at the ring, his jaw followed suit by dropping just like every other jaw in the platoon. Except for poor Troond's, which had apparently been quite firmly rocked since he was massaging it with one glove and patting the mysterious stranger on the shoulder with the other.

"You're fweally talented!" Troond admired. The mystery sailor appeared a bit unsettled; if this was training rules, it meant first to get a knockdown was the winner. So he had just watched Troond get flattened with what was apparently a vicious hit and get right back up with only kind words to say.

"I… I appreciate it. I'm sorry if I hit you-"

"No! Fweally! I'm completely fwoine! Sanctioned fwiolence after all…"

Every pair of eyes in Gundark Platoon scanned the gym, searching for their champion to right the wrong they had just witnessed. The defeat of Troond at the hands of an outsider was an aberration under heaven, one that they would not let go unanswered.

Those eyes settled on Coriff. Once the mystery contender noticed where they were all looking, his settled upon Coriff as well.

"Come on! Go get him, Gunny!" Lieutenant Azut begged. Of course someone had to guard the platoon's honor. They were a Jedi's bodyguards after all. Underutilized and apparently despised, but bodyguards to a national hero nonetheless.

And so it was only a pregnant moment until Gunnery Sergeant Bannick was shepherded into the ring, attended by his men who carried him to his corner like a wave. Gloves were practically forced on his hands, and a dozen eager faces poked out from behind his back to observe with anxious stares how their last hope would fare against this… _interloper_.

"Alright. Touch gloves," one commando announced, having taken it upon himself to referee. The rest of the men fanned out around the little ring, squishing and tumulting upon themselves to acquire the best angles.

Coriff chewed on his mouthguard by mindless habit, allowing the motion to fit it as snugly as possible into his teeth. He met his opponent in the middle, who smiled as they touched their left gloves together – both still holding a high guard with their rights, all too careful not to lean in so far.

Their impromptu referee stomped once on the canvas and belted an incoherent shout. It was time to go.

Leather stuck against the warm patina of sweat on Coriff's face as he held a tight guard, closing in for the first time. He sailed across the canvas with a graceful, veteran shuffle and ran headlong into his opponent's warning shot: a quick jab which seemed to travel through hyperspace to its targeting, blasting against Coriff's upraised gloves at perhaps the exact quarter-second he had drifted within the mystery sailor's reach.

Coriff leaned in, chewing down on the vaguely sweet plastic of his mouthguard as he pressed home a solid one-two combo aimed at his opponent's face and chest respectively. But this mynock was fast – deadly fast. He slipped to Coriff's left and whipped out a killer right hook, pivoting his strength into the blow at the exact moment he drifted around to Coriff's side.

But if the sailor had been expecting a quick victory, he was left disappointed when the commando rolled under the hook and threw his back right foot forward, pivoting on his left and ducking straight into the sailor's guard. He gave him a quick set of uppercuts to the body, neither mustered with enough strength to do any real damage, but connecting hits gone unanswered all the same.

Coriff pushed himself back, skipping out of range just as a right uppercut and overhand left combination threatened to decapitate him.

Fresh out of their violent exchange, with neither party worse for wear, the two contenders smirked at each other. After that, there was no doubt they shared a silent kinship in the sweet science.

The sailor followed Coriff around for the next two minutes, shooting from position to position like an agile missile, answering every movement with a tactical adjustment designed to give him the next best position from which to score a hit. Coriff's size however had not betrayed his own agility, and it was this which appeared to save him from any further damage.

Coriff continued to dodge and block, the pounding and shuffling of his feet retreating across the canvas echoing through the compartment. And the more the other men shouted at him to attack, the more he retreated. He had made one or two attempts, and the last one had in fact earned him a trickle of blood streaming out of his nose. He'd attempted a scouting jab – one that pushed deep – and for his troubles got a vicious cross counter as his opponent ducked expertly to his right, dropped his head, and threw the inertia of his movement into a high right punch that landed squarely on Coriff's face.

It was primarily cosmetic damage, one that didn't appear to faze the commando in the ring. But the hollering of his platoon strangled and cut off at that exact moment. After that moment they were frozen into silence. The mystery fighter pushed forward again, trying a new combination. Terror was painted on every face. Was he going to-

"Time! That's the first round!"

Coriff leaned back into the ropes. "What? When did we start doing rounds?"

"This is a serious fight, Gunnery Sergeant! You have a ref now, of course we're doing rounds!"

"Gunnery Sergeant?" Coriff's opponent asked.

"I thought 'gunny' would've tipped you off earlier."

The rising contender shrugged. "I think I was still recovering from watching your other guy get right back up like a war droid."

Coriff laughed and nodded along. "He can be intimidating like that."

Their referee gently pushed the sailor back into his corner. "Come on, come on, round's over, you guys gotta wait now."

Coriff envied his opponent, who leaned against his corner post in restful solitude taking deep breaths and wiping his shirt over his sweaty face. Half of Gundark Platoon had volunteered themselves as seconds, giving all kinds of contradictory advice about how best to recapture the initiative from that disastrous first round.

And when the second round started, a dozen hands pushed Coriff out of his corner and into battle against the invader.

For the first minute, it looked as if this would be a repeat of the first round. The sailor pursued and Coriff allowed himself to be pursued. His gloves were raised high to deflect the blaster-cannon fire of punches that rattled against his guard.

But from behind those fists, narrow eyes watched every movement. Every shuffle of feet, every jab, cross, hook, and uppercut. Every ancillary movement that the mynock made between them. The way he lowered his guard – just for a moment – before deploying his long-range jab or his vicious cross, if they came as the start of a combination. For if they were just lone probing strikes, his guard never shifted.

The movement of the sailor's guard was on the scale of no more than millimeters, but it was a tell. A tell and an opportunity.

The sailor kept tight. His left shot forward. A probing jab, and nothing more. All in an instant, Coriff pawed it down with his own left, confident that its departure from the guard positon wouldn't be missed in the next half of a second. Coriff rocked forward with his right, striking the mynock clean in the cheek.

His opponent stumbled back, and Coriff looked ready to capitalize. He leaned in, striking with a potentially explosive jab – and his opponent ducked to his right once again, cocking that counter cross for a nuclear retaliation against someone who had just gotten a bit too confi-

Coriff leaned in from the hips, but his weight remained on his back legs. Just as his jab had been let out, he reeled back just far enough that the counter he knew would be coming only grazed the very tip of his still-flowing nose.

He shifted his weight from the heels to the toe – he felt hot breath from his opponent in the claustrophobic space between them. Fire poured into his hands – and his right fist came around in a tight, brutal hook to the sailor's unprotected head.

"_GHUK!"_

Coriff's opponent tumbled forward as his suddenly wobbling legs buckled under the weight of his body. He fell on his side then rolled onto his back, groaning as he stared at the overhead.

Gundark Platoon's honor was saved.

The compartment erupted into cheers and the canvas shook from their bounding against the ropes. Coriff leaned down and offered an arm to his fellow warrior, who after a moment of regaining his senses gladly hooked his arm around Coriff's and stood up, still shaky.

"All good, brother?" Coriff gave him a once-over.

"A little shaken up. Once I remember my name, I think everything'll be just fine."

"Speaking of, it was an exciting fight. Who do I thank for it?"

The sailor pulled off his gloves and offered a fraternal hand.

"Ensign Trask Ulgo. Just came aboard yesterday. And likewise."

"Gunnery Sergeant Coriff Bannick… sir," The commando met his handshake and winked.

Trask shot him a wry grin.


	3. Endar Spire Part 2

Coriff huffed. His heels pressed against the deck. His chalk-dusted fingers curled tight around the steel bar, against which he secured himself to bring his thighs fully parallel to the deck. Motion – beginning from the stern and solid core of his strength – coursed from his powerful legs. The bar rose, just beyond the shins, when he pulled his legs taught and pressed his hips out, recruiting musculature of his back which rippled like a turbulent wave under his form-fitting Commando Instructor School shirt as he came to a full standing position. The steel bar was bowing under the severe weight of the plasteel disks secured on either side.

He lowered himself again, this time much faster, hissing out through the teeth in an almost ritual way, exiling the tension and strain which he had just demanded of himself. Coriff repeated the process only four more times, and then he stepped away with an accomplished, sloppy grin.

That was when Trask stepped in; men traded spots, and now Coriff stood off to the side, crouched, observing his partner's form with two fingers of one hand perched beneath his chin to signal his deep attention. Ensign Ulgo wasn't as quick to execute his five repetitions, although his form lacked no perfection and made no compromise for the weight. He gestured with a half-hearted thumbs-up while bent over, caught recovering his own breath. Their competition was still healthy – and he was keeping up with the weight this week, too.

Coriff led for the back and arms, and they were equal with respect to chest exercises, but Ulgo no doubt would triumph in the sphere of leg exercises; his thighs were two striated trunks which possessed some untold power to squat – quite deeply – weights that even Coriff might consider absurd. He was a faster runner, too. That had come as a particular shock to the commando who wore his speed like a badge; his ability to press on to the finish even if the rest of the platoon flagged and guttered had always impressed subordinates and superiors alike.

But if a battle ever arranged itself along the lines of whose body could bear the most strain over time, well, Coriff was a winner. Any sailor could train the same hour, even two hours of a Naval Commando's specific in-gym routine and never meet their counterpart's most average watermarks, even at the flood tide of their competitive energy. It was simply the demanding nature of all the other work a commando did – every agility exercise, every ruck, every partner or weapon lifted and carried and put down again with no other motive than to _work_. For work was its own start and finish.

Coriff knew this all too well, as a man on the receiving end and as the party responsible for its deliverance, the sharpening stone upon which commandos were to be run ceaselessly, themselves blades which the Republic could never afford to let dull and tarnish in the idle exposure between assignments. "Alright, _work_," was the order to execute at every training function. Lift an ammunition locker over your head and press it to failure. Put it down, wait one, and start again. Lift your partner. Run. Stop. Pull yourself up. Do more. Lift more. No stopping point would be established from the start. No such luxury of an arbitrary limit in time or repetitions as a _survive-until_ window.

_Work_. That was the operative order. There was a task, a circuit, a _mission_, and it was executed until it was over. Their founder was a Jedi named Rezet Tur-Mukan, a follower of Revan who disappeared after the Mandalorian Wars. He instilled within the embryo of Republic special operations his maxim: "_The mission is indefinite_." The mission was indefinite, and so when the Republic's best trained for their mission, they trained to go on indefinitely in rightful course.

_Work_.

Coriff squatted down and stripped the weight disks from his side of the bar, and then the other. His heaviest set was all that remained for his workout. Trask humbly bowed out from that set while he assisted his comrade in setting the new weight disks on. Coriff paced back and forth on the platform, whisking his arms and legs around in wide circles to expel the fatigue and strain he had accumulated up until that point.

"One more and we're out of here, Coriff. We've still got to move all my stuff," said Trask.

The commando crouched down and curled his rough hands around the grip surface of the bar. He bounced once, and then twice to prepare his legs. "Just this set, admiral. I would never keep a roommate waiting," Coriff huffed.

He grunted, bounced once more, and finally raised himself up, towering in his focus and fierce demeanor. Piles of muscle tested the stretch of his workout garments. Rail-lines of tendons pressed against his skin. Trask looked on with crossed arms and a flat scowl.

"Three… four… now come on!"

Coriff hesitated on his last rise; sweat poured over his forehead and stained in patches over the whole of his shirt. His heels pressed resolutely into the deck, and he rose one last time. At the height of his ascent his hips thrust out, and his arms locked straight. A tight breath hissed out victoriously.

But at once his vision left him.

Coriff's mind suddenly alienated itself entirely. He no longer felt where he stood, or where he was or _what _he was. Like a spectator viewing the holoscreen he could only watch through a set of eyes how _someone _rested at the apex of their lift.

They were not his hands, nor was it his back or his core that suffered the weight of the bar but nonetheless he felt their strain seemingly outside of himself. In a single shattering moment of terror he lost sensations of the self.

He could see Trask. He could see the bar, and the bulkhead and the metal surfaces of the cruiser's interior. But it was silent. Even when Trask's eyes shot open and his mouth rumbled out noise, those sounds only tapped on the edge of Coriff's head like a distant passing vehicle. He could comprehend nothing. He only observed himself and the rest of the world.

There was no feeling of solidity. The corporeal merely wrapped around him like a worn linen which drifted on the wind. From within Coriff and without him, he observed himself crashing the bar down to the platform. He watched himself stumble back against the bulkhead. And once his chalked, calloused hands went to rub his temple he felt himself return.

"Coriff! Hey there, brother… come on…" Trask's pleas muffled before they reached Coriff's ears like they were spoken from the bottom of a swimming pool. But Coriff could watch him now, and when the words knocked on the edge of his skull, he felt his awareness reunited with him in tingling waves.

"_Coriff!_"

Ensign Ulgo's next shout was punctuated with a rocking slap. Coriff looked back at him dumbly, tracing the memory of the sharp sting on his cheek with a lazy palm.

"I'm… good. I'm good. You alright?" Coriff's hazy mind searched for anything to divert attention from its episode. "That was pretty heavy. I think I went light-headed there for a second."

Trask glared suspiciously.

"Yeah, I know. I guess I can't do five after all, huh? Sorry to make you see that." Coriff stepped around him to get back on the platform, bending over to strip off the weight disks. When he saw his hands, he stopped dead in total unrecognition. Coriff stared at his palms, and then the backs of his hands. In a moment he felt convinced they were his own.

The higher-ranking man of the two yanked Coriff up by the collar of his shirt. "Bullshit you're good. I called your name a dozen times and you looked at me like Malak's head just sprouted out of my neck."

Coriff wrung his hands awkwardly. His mouth cycled between open and closed, looking for the right words to cover himself. Cold heat sprung out of his chest; the same cold heat of someone found out for their lie.

"I told you I'm fine. I mean it. Let's just-"

Trask took Coriff's wrist roughly and wrapped another arm over his friend's shoulder.

"I'm taking you to medical. Let's say I take your word for it you drop _dead_ in five minutes because something broke and I didn't take you to the ship's surgeon. You expect me to take that risk?"

"It isn't- I'm not-"

"We're leaving right now. This can't w-."

At that instant, Coriff ripped his arm out of the officer's grip and pushed Trask away with a rough press of the shoulder. When Trask moved in closer, Coriff strong-armed him at the sternum and kept him from closing in any more.

"Nobody is going to medical." The apple in Coriff's throat wavered up and down for a second. "I know what it is… it isn't the first time," his eyes lowered in shame. "If you can promise to keep it to yourself then I'll tell you. Deal?"

Trask hesitated. "I'm not sure about that."

"If you drag me to medical over this I'm _fucked_, Trask. I can count on you, right?"

Coriff stared into his eyes. They were locked together and he knew the ensign was weighing his responsibilities as a friend and a sailor. These situations were supposed to be easy on paper, but Trask was a good man. Coriff only wondered what he could do if the man refused and went off to get the ship's doc. Would he yell at him to stop? Grab him? Make something up?

"Yeah…" Trask muttered. "Yeah, you can count on me."

Both men grasped the other's forearm. One, optimistically with the grin and style of a conspirator, and the other with a resigned understanding: concern tempered with duty to a comrade. After a brief shower each, they were off to the port dormitories to begin the tedious job of shuttling all of Trask's possessions to the starboard dormitories.

The _Endar Spire_ was overmanned for their mission and packed with stores beyond her regular complement. As a natural consequence it required some men to be moved from one living space to another so their rooms could be taken up for storage or berthing for an entirely separate department. Trask was himself a senior member of the engineering division and at least given the opportunity to "hot-rack" with someone in the starboard officer staterooms.

And as if by fate or the will of the Force, Trask was assigned to share a bed with Gunnery Sergeant Bannick – not himself an officer, but the sheer size of the additional enlisted cohort taken aboard was forcing senior NCO's into staterooms. Although, it was only the ship's billeting officer who felt particularly forced. It wasn't much of a burden on Coriff to have an actual human-sized bed and a full wall locker to himself for a change.

As per the conditions of their "hot-rack" arrangement, Coriff would spend his time training with the commandos during the day – if the ship's clock keeping "daytime" hours meant anything at all in deep space – and come in to swap out at night, right when Trask would be waking up to go stand watch in the engineering plant. They might chat or play cards if time allowed, then Coriff would change into his nightwear and slip into his rack, called hot for the residual warmth left behind by his partner and its recent occupant. And in the morning, Ensign Ulgo would come in early to change out of his uniform and join Coriff at the ship's gym, then come back and get some sleep.

By the grace of the watch-bill officer, their current day was one free of assigned work or recurrent trainings, so that after their interlude at the gym there was more than enough time to move Trask's gear and commiserate over some drinks in the mess.

When Coriff hefted one of Trask's tool-laden footlockers over his shoulder, he received a cocked forward head and glare which informed him it was time to hold up his end of the deal.

"It's not my health. My body is fine."

"You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical, gunny."

"What does it matter to you if you aren't turning me in for it anyways?"

Coriff looked back at him in the passageway, for only a moment. He suddenly felt guilty for doing so and let his gaze crawl back ahead.

"Because you're my friend, Coriff. If you're unwell, then I'd like to know a little bit more about it. Imagine if it was a guy from your platoon. You'd want to know all about it, wouldn't you?"

"I'm not in your platoon."

"And you're still not answering my questions."

Coriff held back a reply for a moment when they came across an intersection in the ship's passageways. A pair of sailors stepped on through, apparently too anxious and lost in their idle chat to render greetings for a non-com and an officer. It was just the sort of day to let it slide.

"Whatever it is, it's been a lot worse ever since coming aboard."

"Don't like being on the ship?"

"See, that's just the thing. I've _been_ on ships. It's never been a problem," Coriff scoffed. "And now I'm on this rotten cruiser for two weeks and I'm barely keeping it together."

Trask's brows turned down at a harsh angle. "You say keeping it together. What do you mean by that?"

"Mentally, I mean. This… this thing, whatever it is, it's all in my head. Sometimes I'll just be doing something. Running, lifting, reading, just sitting around. And just like that, I feel like I'm… I'm _outside_ of my body. Like I'm just watching Coriff Bannick do something. When you talked to me…" Trask perked up, and Coriff turned his head around slightly, "it sounded like you were at the other end of a deep pool."

"And so that's why you weren't saying anything."

"I don't know if I could if I tried."

They went shock-silent as another working party crossed their path at an intersection. From then on they took their trips back and forth from the port and starboard dormitories slower, glancing at corners and doors before they spoke.

Coriff set down the footlocker, the first of half a dozen.

"Sounds like an out-of-body experience to me."

"_Something _like that." Coriff's voice shivered as if crowned in snow.

"And why haven't you talked to anyone about it?" Trask said.

"Well I haven't gone to medical. I won't risk anything like that going up the chain. It'll be a goodbye, a pension, and a one-way ticket out of the military if they think it's something hazardous. But I _have_ tried setting myself up with someone from naval psych."

Trask nodded. "Because naval psych can't report on something without your permission."

"And that's just the thing. I tried three times on Corulag and once on Coruscant to set an appointment. Two of them suddenly booked up, one got transferred, and then the last one on Corulag, I had an appointment set up, day of, I head out to the medical center by the naval infantry base…"

They took pause for a group of busy electricians to overtake them.

"Right by the naval infantry base… and I show up, and they tell me nobody's ever _heard_ of the guy."

"Hold on now," Trask sputtered. "What do you mean they hadn't heard of him?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. I set the appointment, I go in, they tell me nobody under that name works there and that their psychiatry specialists are all on temporary duty off-world. I even had the confirmation chit. Told me it was a _system error_."

Trask couldn't help but chuckle. "Sounds like there's a conspiracy against you."

Coriff smirked. "Yeah. I guess so. Whatever it is, I'm just gonna tough it out for this mission, help get Commander Shan to where she needs to be, and take some leave on Coruscant to get to the bottom of all this. I need a little peace of mind, you know?"

"Hear hear, brother," Trask nodded along. "You think it's worse now for any reason? Maybe all the Jedi on board could have something to do with it."

"You think it has something to do with the Force?"

"Maybe their ambient Force power has uh… some effect on you."

"A Force-field, huh?" Coriff and Trask laughed together. "Maybe so."

"Maybe so. Maybe not. Just take care of yourself, alright? I said I won't tell medical, and I mean it, but if you're overconfident about this and go and get yourself hurt…"

Coriff spun around on his heels. "I _won't_. I know my limits, Trask. I'll keep it under control."

The officer gazed back at him suspiciously.

"I'll take your word for it. If you mean it."

"I mean it."

Hairs stood on end in a rippling wave which began at the base of Trask's neck and imperiously spread to raise all of his body's little physiological alarms. There was no way he could believe this, truly? Not that he'd ever had the least amount of patience for morons or mewling complainers in the past who had beseeched him on the basis of authority not to go telling for some transgression or disqualifying medical factor.

How many people selfishly took claim to their dangerous job where the mortal safety of others depended on a singular, unbroken ability to complete the mission without interruptions? But in his heart Trask couldn't claim that Coriff was a faker, a sick man clinging to a job. There was just something about the way he carried himself; an invisible weight unmeasured. Walking behind him for some time then he tried to read his steps. He counted up the subtle mannerisms, his attitude, and everything he had said about his life story.

And what Trask read was lacuna. A text seemingly short of a verse here and there. He was like a poem missing just one rhyme – on its own, inconsequential, but in the context of a full stanza it collapsed what came before and after it.

But Ensign Ulgo couldn't feel disdain. He wasn't being lied to.

"_But someone is_."

Trask double-taked.

"Hey. That's the last of it, right?" Coriff drawled, then groaned and stretched out his unladen arms once he dropped the handles of a plasteel cylinder.

"Sure is, partner," Trask smirked, despite himself. "I appreciate the help."

Coriff gently thumbed the tassels of an ornate red and gold service medal which lay at the top of a loose pile of personal effects on Trask's pull-out working desk. It felt like it came from somewhere, a long time ago.

"Alderaan. You're from Alderaan."

Trask brushed his hair back with a lazy hand. "You got me. Took you long enough," he admitted humbly.

"I'd call that a victory over someone who's as tight-lipped as you are."

Trask sat down on their bed. Coriff hopped up on the balls of his feet and sat on the desk.

"Well I wasn't hiding it _too_ hard."

"Don't act so casual about it. You're locked up tight."

"Fine," Trask raised a palm in humble surrender. "I just don't want people getting it in their heads that I got here because of politics."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Trask leaned forward and took the medal in his hand. He traced his finger around the thin copper border which bound the emblem at the center of the piece. Coriff squinted and read off the Aurebesh slowly.

"_Family… discipline… duty.._." Coriff stared up at him in a moment of instantaneous recognition.

"Yeah."

Coriff wheezed something between a laugh and a shout. "_Ulgo_ Ulgo! That's where I've heard it before!" He slapped his rack mate on the shoulder. "Royalty, eh? Heir to the throne?"

"Something like that," Trask chortled. "First in line for the title. One day I'll be the Duke Ulgo. The eighteenth specifically. But right now the monarch is an Organa king. He's old, and his only heir is an infant, so our mutual ally the Panteers will probably be elected next."

"You say probably," Coriff teased, wagging a mischievous finger, "but that doesn't mean you won't ever be."

"If you're asking for a royal title, I could probably dig something up."

"The Lord Prince of Coruscant? Supreme Commander of Nal Hutta?"

"I was thinking more-"

Coriff clapped his hands. "King-Sergeant of the Republic Navy. How about that?"

"I was thinking court jester. Or maybe the household staff could use another guy to carry garbage out to the incinerators."

At first Coriff frowned, but he soon steeled himself with discipline and veneration and bowed his head. "If it is what my lordly Duke and Ensign asks of his most humble subject."

Trask's smile faded. "Just don't go telling anyone, Cor. Seriously."

"Well, it's fair now. Both of us have a secret to keep."

Trask locked his fingers behind his weary head and lay back on their shared rack. A thin layer of synth foam put just enough give around the shape of his body.

"As much as things have gotten better since before the Mandalorian Wars for equality in the ranks, I can't complain about officer beds."

"How long did you spend as an enlisted sailor before you moved up in the world?"

Trask tapped his heels together. "Eight years. I ended up kicking a real troubled engineering division into shape on the _Lac'an_ when someone with rank on 'em took notice. And now, I'm here." He grunted and sat up. "Think you'll try and make the switch?"

"I don't think so," Coriff said dismissively. "I'm not cut out for officer work. I'd rather be leading in the trenches than doing paperwork. I'd be more likely to clock a bureaucrat in the face than play the political game."

"It's not really so political," Trask countered, "if you put yourself in the right spot. I don't think even _senators _would try and mess with the commandos' formula."

"You'd think, wouldn't you?"

Trask laughed and stood up. He dug around in his footlockers for a moment, winding his hands around his carefully organized tool racks within for his most prized piece. When he stood again, his arm was outstretched wielding a majestic form of steel at its greatest extent. A proper Alderaanian vibrosword.

"Blade's a bit more narrow, guard is a bit smaller. She's dangerous but she's faster."

Coriff could only whistle in reply. "Did you have to sell the kingdom for that one?"

"Straight from the House of Ulgo's armament plant. At least a few generations ago, it was. This used to be my grandfather's."

Trask swung it around a few times, testing the response of his muscles and the cold command of instinct.

"May I?" Coriff held out gentle hands.

No-one short of a master smith could have found a fault with the blade. When Coriff held his arm out, the sensation was as though holding a weapon half its length. The faintly sweet scent of polished steel cut into the air with a few test swipes. Blade-glint under the artificial ceiling lights shone like waves on a moonlit sea.

Coriff placed it back in Trask's hands reverently. His fingers uncurled from the religiously unassuming leather grip, which had been worked with dedication by its maker to resemble mere flat lengths of rubber drawn around a core.

Trask found the question in his friend's eyes before he asked it. "It doesn't have a name, if you were wondering. Zabrak do that. Sith do it a lot. Sometimes Echani do it. But it isn't something we Alderaanians do much."

"We should practice together sometime."

Trask grinned. "Well this was my own way of asking. Let's make the time."

He bent over to put it back in its safe place.

"Word is the officers are a bit nervous about our mission. We're a day out from Taris and still no sign of the rest of the fleet," said Coriff.

Trask bit his lip. "They're on radio silence. We wouldn't have heard anything."

"There's been fighting on the surface."

"And last we heard, we still hold all the starports and the gun platforms in orbit. Good money says we'll be just fine," Trask assured a bit too quickly.

"Good money, but I just wish we had a higher alert level right now. We can't stand the platoon up until the captain gives the go-ahead."

Trask sighed and rubbed his gloved hands together. "We'll be fine," he replied, ignoring the nervous heat under his collar. "Either way, I'm gonna make some rounds. Maybe get something to eat. I'm not on watch but I'd like to go and make sure we can get out of there on a credit chit if we have to."

"You do that," Coriff sighed, stripping off his uniform down to the body-sock undergarment. He laid down on the rack. "I'll get up early and form the boys up. Just in case."

Trask shot Coriff a quick thumbs-up on the way out. The security door whooshed and locked shut behind him.

%%%

%%%

"_It shouldn't be this way."_

"_And yet, it is."_

"_It isn't fair. We should at least be aware," he said._

"_You know as well as I do that we can't hear."_

"_So all we can do is accept the status quo?" He asked angrily._

"_I believe so."_

"_I'm not ready yet."_

_They looked at him. And they knew._

%%%

%%% 

_Coriff peered around the corner. Amber emergency lights seemed to stain the walls in the most sickly, faint paste. His own feet placed one after another in front of him were visible only by grace of the ambient glow from his visor reflecting the will-o-wisp of faint blue atop black steel-toe._

_He stepped boldly into the intersecting passageway. He looked left, and then right, screening any targets ahead with the red targeting laser. Its path erupted from beside the mouth of his blaster rifle, visible only by coordinating frequency with his helmet visor. _

_There!_

_A ghost of a cape fluttered past a door at the other end of the passageway. Coriff checked his six; nobody was there. _

_The entire ship was empty, it seemed, except for him and his target. So while he had no support to count on he at least moved on without fear of a sneak attack._

_Coriff pursued with lethal intent, placing one foot in front of the other at a precise march. The sight of his blaster rifle stayed level at eye-height with rehearsed skill even as his shoulders bounced slightly on each beat and breath._

_He stormed through the door. Rolled. Fired a shot. Checked for his pray down the new passageway._

_Nothing but carbon scoring on a magnetically sealed door._

_Coriff ripped his helmet off and flung it violently at the bulkhead. It clattered off and rolled pathetically on the deck. It was hard to keep track of the failed hunts anymore._

"_You should pay more attention."_

_His hackles rose, and every feature of his face contorted in a killer's rage. He whipped around and leveled the rifle towards the head of such an elusive target._

_The blaster slipped out of impotent hands at the moment of sight._

_Coriff stared ahead. Weak, drowsy fingers clawed at the sidearm stuck into his belt loop. He took aim, yet terrified to pull the trigger._

_Only a mask stared back._

"_It will happen soon."_

"_And the third?" Coriff shouted._

"_Oh, in his own way… in his own time."_


	4. Endar Spire Part 3

Coriff's head lolled to one side. Then it rolled over to the cold side of his pillow. Contorted in silent fear, his face remained locked in a harsh, chaotic slumber.

A roaring blast wailed against the starboard hull and flung the soldier clear off of the bed, painfully against the deck. He clutched the back of his throbbing skull and desperately blinked away the fog of sleep.

Trask burst through the security door, pistol in hand with another blaster rifle slung over his shoulder. "We've been ambushed by a Sith battle fleet! The _Endar Spire_ is under attack! Hurry up – we don't have much time!"

The officer plunged a blaster pistol back into its holster and rifled through one of the footlockers. He yanked out the sorted trays of tools and parts, throwing them to the side in favor of his desperate search. Coriff was already throwing a bandolier over his blue uniform bodysuit when Trask retrieved his prized sword and tucked it into his belt.

"Brought you this. Might do you better than a pistol until we get to the armory," Trask remarked, throwing him the blaster rifle that had been strapped over his arm.

"Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck!_ How did they catch us?" Coriff yelped. His knuckles crushed white around the rifle grip.

"You think I have a fucking clue?" Trask barked anxiously. He replaced the powerpack on his pistol and aimed down the sight. "Whole damn fleet we were supposed to meet is a _meteor shower_ over Taris right now. There's gotta be three or four _Interdictors_ out there. Fighters are-" Trask was cut off by another blast, followed by the agonizing shriek of rending hull steel. Both men were nearly thrown off their feet.

"Are they trying to board us or kill us!?" Coriff shouted. Trask punched in a short code and circumvented the locked-down door once again.

"It doesn't matter either way. We're soldiers. Bastila's going to need men and women like us at her side if there's any hope of accomplishing the mission."

Another door blocked their path. Muffled by the durasteel barrier Trask and Coriff heard the frenzied shouts of battle, blasterfire, and screams when a shot found home and sizzled raw flesh. Trask dove into his work in disabling their next barrier.

"Captain's dead. XO is dead. Lieutenant Onasi has been telling everyone to make their way to the bridge. I think it's a last stand," Trask's voice wavered.

"The armory is on the way there. Maybe some of my guys are up too. If Bastila's still alive, then we can get her to the escape pods, flee to the surface…"

"And then what?"

The door lock chirped.

"Improvise," Coriff growled, shouldering his rifle.

At the instant the door parted open, Coriff sprinted straight through, laying down a merciless wave of blasterfire at the Sith boarding troops forcing their way down the corridor. Trask dove out behind him, taking cover behind a makeshift barricade of scrap and spare hull plating.

Just as soon as the chaos began, three Sith corpses crowded the deck, unmoving, hands still wrapped around their warm blasters.

Behind Trask and Coriff were two similar Republic bodies. Unmasked, those faces still memorialized the expressions of shock worn at the moment of death.

"These Sith must have been the advanced boarding party," Trask swapped out his pistol for one of the black-armored bodies' rifles. "Their shuttles cut a hole in port engineering. If they've made it this far already…"

"It means we keep moving," Coriff ordered to his technical superior.

They passed into the next compartment, which was a makeshift supply room for a portion of the extra stores taken aboard for the mission. These Sith had been caught off guard; with their first shots Trask and Coriff wiped out four men, but a fifth had come out from beside the door and rushed the commando with vibrosword upraised.

Coriff effortlessly skirted away from the downswipe. His pivot to the right put his left foot in position to stomp down on the grip of his opponent's sword. Its wielder was dragged down to the floor in the split-second he had attempted to hold on, leaving him bent down and to the side at a dangerous angle underneath his foe. In a single motion, Coriff withdrew the vibro-bayonet hanging from his belt and stuck it cleanly into the neck of the Sith trooper, piercing the body-sock between the helmet and shoulder piece.

It was a decapitation in all but name. Coriff settled the matter with a final blaster shot to the faceplate and kicked the twitching body definitively away.

The next compartment was a similar story. Coriff moved ahead while Trask covered his six, and the two of them waded into a massive firefight at an extended four-way intersection passageway. In the hazy chaos generated from the over-use of grenades and burning wreckage it was impossible to see more than five feet ahead.

The acrid, bitter stench of fire and guts invaded Coriff's nose with a twisted familiarity. He tasted sweet iron when he pulled the pin of a fragmentation grenade with his teeth, throwing it across the compartment towards a squad of Sith heavy weapons operators blasting away indiscriminately from behind a portable energy shield.

The associated blast followed by the pained groans of an unfortunate survivor cued Trask and Coriff to move in. They blasted their way into the melee. Coriff's elite marksmanship left each Sith soldier dropping faster than the one prior, but even with all his speed it hadn't left them with any more than two surviving allies: a pair of hull repairmen who had been showering the Sith with inefficient pot-shots from holdout blasters now emerged from their cover. Both men scurried over, bent down at the hips to keep their heads out of the suffocating barrier of smoke which had accumulated more or less at eye level.

"You two stay behind us. We're heading for the bridge, and then we're getting off of this thing. Understood?"

Shell-shocked but compliant the two maintenance techs simply nodded and stared, wide-eyed at their savior.

Coriff and Trask pushed ahead, looking back every other moment to ensure their charges had not fallen behind or become skewered on collapsing structural durasteel. Passing into the next compartment, all four men froze at the sight of two Force warriors locked in mortal combat.

"It's a dark Jedi! This fight is too much for us – we better stay back. All we'll do is get in the way," Trask ordered when he saw Coriff shoulder his blaster. While he stared down the sights, it appeared as if he was going to obey, even if by stupefaction alone.

Their movements were ethereal. To Coriff it was like watching two fighters move just ahead of the march of time. As soon as he thought saw one Jedi strike and one Sith parry, one had already launched the next attack.

The Jedi, a female, appeared to have the upper hand. Her green blade shattered the hilt of her opponent's red blade, and in the next flash, her weapon carved through the Sith's gleaming metal torso piece.

Coriff gaped in awe. He had fought a dark Jedi before, but only once, and his team had gotten the drop on her anyhow. Watching how these Force warriors fought up close and personal on their own terms was akin to observing a deity. His fingers only trembled to imagine how he could ever match the speed of their blades.

And in the same moment, a power main running along the length of the bulkhead overloaded and burst. In a flash the victorious Jedi woman crashed onto the ground, undulating not with life but with merciless, burning electrical exposure. Just like that, her smoking corpse lay atop her just-vanquished foe.

"That was one of the Jedi accompanying Bastila," Trask mumbled. He stepped over the bodies and waved the group forward. "Damn… we could have used her help."

Coriff followed yet hesitated mid-step over the pair of super-human corpses. He stared down, transfixed ethereally by the promise of the Jedi's lightsaber, now useless to its old owner, rolling back and forth in little circles on the shuddering deck.

It felt blasphemous when he wrapped his fingers around the grip and examined it. He felt the weight of an infinite crime join him when he clipped it onto his belt. And he felt an alien, other-worldly assurance, like a memory he never remembered making when it clattered against his holstered pistol with every footstep.

Trask fussed over the next door-lock for almost a minute until breaking through. Hostile clicks and whirrs of rifles being aimed were the particular clicks and whirrs that raised up Coriff's heart in a relieved song.

"Finally some good news!" Gunnery Sergeant Coriff Bannick shouted, elbowing around Trask and stepping into the commando armory with arms outstretched.

"We didn't think you were gonna make it boss! Lieutenant Azut left a while ago. He's got the other three squads with him, they're trying to hold back another boarding party coming through the combat systems section," Staff Sergeant Otaron filled his superior in.

Besh Squad suited up at maximum speed once more when they set their weapons down, Coriff joining them in earnest. He swapped out his boots and secured the personally-fitted armor plates over his bodysuit. With six commandos, Trask, and two mechanics behind him now, Coriff had assembled a much stronger team than he believed he would've found in the throes of a surprise attack.

"_Comms good?"_ Coriff inquired over the tactical net. Vizvaal shot him a thumbs-up. Ena-Karau, the Iridonian, slapped his chest plate twice in confirmation. The others chimed in over the net.

"Grab some weapons," Trask shouted to the two mechanics, who nervously obeyed the order to pillage the commando armory, defiling it in front of its very owners.

Coriff tossed his dime-a-dozen rifle to the side and exchanged it for the prize piece hanging in his own locker. It was good to have the steel-black A-40CX Blas-Tech carbine rifle back in his hands. Its weight proportions were nothing short of phenomenal. Years of training with it made it feel like a natural extension of Coriff's own body. He inserted a fresh powerpack behind the trigger guard and reveled in its warm hum.

Otaron also outfitted himself with an A-40CX, as was expected of a squad leader. Sergeant Vizvaal, the autorifleman, hefted a Merr-Sonn RBR-11 repeater, an old design copied off of the Mandalorians. Ena-Karau was his assistant autorifleman, stowing the extra powerpacks in his bandoliers and packing a vicious Blas-Tech PAB80 personal carbine to help guard Vizvaal against close-in threats.

Sergeant Troond, the gentle Onderonian he was, cradled a cut-down Merr-Sonn CD-4 DMR marksman rifle in his powerful arms. His neck shawl was pulled over his right shoulder like a pauldron, and he stared ahead from behind the faceplate of his helmet in wordless prayer. Corporals Palant and Diardo stood beside him checking their gear, the former packing an A-40CX as well as a Golan Arms M1200 plasgun for close quarters combat. The latter, a stout Sullustan, was equipped with the same manufacturer's RCR - the Republic Commando Rifle, more or less a long-barreled spinoff of the A-40CX.

Both of the mechanics hefted M1200 plasguns which looked nearly cartoonish in their untrained hands. Fortunately it was a weapon that relied far less on skill than raw explosive short-range power. So long as the barrel was _generally _pointed towards the people who needed to be dead, by and large the user could generate the desired outcome.

"_Alright kids_," Coriff hissed, "_let's go earn our pay_."

When the commandos advanced out of the armory as one unit, the other three men realized it was time to get a move on. They followed at safe distance, sufficiently confident they could do little but get in the way. At least their flanks would be safe.

Out of the armory they progressed down an empty corridor which had been previously cleared, opening up into the ship's enlisted mess, the galley where the lower-ranking sailors ate their meals. It was the scene of a recent defeat for the Republic crew, and dozens of bodies lay still on the deck from sword cuts and blasterfire.

There were at least two dozen Sith holding that compartment, and in the time it took for the first of them to notice the commandos to the moment all two dozen were smoking corpses was a little under four seconds.

And so it was the same story in the next compartment, and the one after that. Wordless titans cut like a scythe through all Sith opposition. Even over the tacnet few orders were truly necessary. These scenarios were practiced in these compartments so many times before that the execution of the commandos' mission felt more like an easy concert recital than a genuine challenge.

Once they reached the bridge, the seven commandos stacked up at either side of the doors. The two plasgun-armed sailors watched their backs, and Trask dutifully punched in his credentials to override the security system.

The door chirped.

"_Fix bayonets_."

Seven vibro-bayonets rasped joyously out of their scabbards and secured under the barrel of each man's weapon.

"Ready?" Trask leaned away from the door, ready to duck out of the way.

Coriff nodded.

"_Go!_"

The bridge was awash with targets. It was awash further with friendlies. Bridge crew, ship's guards, engineers, and every other flavor of Republic Navy sailor dueled with sword and blaster against the wretched tidal wave of the Sith advance.

Besh Squad stormed into the fray at best possible speed. Their occasional precise shots from across the compartment were meant to save the odd sailor who was about to lose their life, while the unified vee-shaped bayonet charge did the greater share of the killing.

"_Oto, check your right. Two shooters."_

"_Cover left."_

"_I have him."_

"_Ena, Viz, back. Two left."_

"_Left side clear."_

"_Right side clear."_

"_Clear forward."_

"_Clear back."_

Coriff slung his rifle over his shoulder and slowly pulled off his helmet. The surviving Republic men and women on the bridge – Besh Squad excluded – numbered some fifteen officers and enlisted. Some were lightly wounded, others were drenched in blood. Only a lucky few of those drenched were not stained with their own vitality.

"Where's Lieutenant Onasi? Where's Bastila?" Coriff saw no famous bodies on the deck, so at the very least he discounted their immediate deaths.

"The escape pods, sir. Carth sent Bastila ahead and now he's guarding the compartment with a few men," a gore-stained female officer struggled out.

"Can you all walk?" Coriff shouted.

A chorus of affirmatives and nods followed. A few stood lame or clutched their sides. Hurt, but ultimately still mobile.

"Good." Coriff placed the helmet back on his head, and his next words projected coldly from the voice modulator. "Stay behind us and stay together. Ensign Ulgo and his two men will keep you safe. We're making our way to the escape pods."

Trask whipped the survivors into good order and fell in behind the commandos once more. The next compartment was the navigation compartment. Empty, yet every soul could feel an imposing presence reach out to them. Something imminent.

"There's something behind that door…" Trask growled.

Coriff's every hair stood on end. He felt it was about to happen. _It_. Not just something. A wave. A wave that passed through him just a terrifying moment before it passed _over_ the others.

"Get down!" Coriff yelled.

At the instant the security door flew open, a searing pressure wave blasted all of the Republic survivors into the walls and deck. Besh Squad was back at their feet in an instant, forming a line of Myrmidons in front of their wounded comrades.

What stared back at them from the other compartment – an auxiliary passageway lined with the bodies of Aurek Squad – was a flaying presence. He looked on. Amused. His yellow eyes flamed with hate and his lips turned up in a bone-chilling grimace.

His double-bladed lightsaber lit up with a panic-inducing red glow. Everyone but Trask and the commandos shouted in fear, yet for all of their terror could not muster up the will to move.

Coriff stood rock-steady at the front of his bayonet phalanx. "_So this is where I die_," he thought, accepting fate with an unusual candor and nonchalance. It was almost beautiful, facing something so awful and powerful now. Of course he and his men would be killed now. No hood, no neck gaiter; this was beyond any doubt a senior warrior in the Sith ranks.

They would be cut limb from limb. Organs would wash onto the deck in a sea of blood. He would melt through them with the same ease Besh Squad had melted through the regular boarding troops earlier.

But they would go down fighting.

"Trask, get them to the escape pods."

For a moment, nobody moved. The Sith Lord grinned as if salivating over the expectation of another banquet of suffering.

Trask woke himself up from the stupor of the moment and nagged the petrified survivors to get up and move out.

"_Go!_"

Coriff went first, firing two wild shots to confuse the Sith Lord. He thrust forward with his rifle, envisioning his bayonet piercing out the other end of the enemy's chest. But with inhuman speed the Sith shuffled to the side and cut the rifle in half with a swift saber-stroke. Coriff felt the air grab his ankle; he keeled forward, about to trip, but he _expected_ this.

Coriff pivoted around the stuck leg with a wide right knee, sticking the Sith clean in the ribs. He stumbled and at the same moment threw Coriff into the bulkhead with the Force.

Otaron and Vizvaal were close behind, with Diardo and Palant and Troond attempting a flanking maneuver. Otaron shouted, bringing his bayonet down in a high arc with the intent of stabbing the Sith through the collar.

Otaron's body clattered wetly on the floor. His head and helmet rolled back and forth at the point of landing beneath the enemy's clean diagonal sweep. Vizvaal feinted, and swooped in with a straight thrust, until his arms were cleaved above the elbows. His wretched scream gurgled over the tacnet.

Coriff winced, picking himself up off the deck, observing that part of his helmet had been shattered from the impact. He gripped the standard-issue long sword at his hip.

Diardo and Palant attacked together. The former used his wiry speed and strength to get in close while at the same time Palant fired off a volley of distracting shots. The Sith grabbed Diardo by the skull from afar, seeming to hold him in place with an open palm more than a foot away, and with the other arm effortlessly deflected Palant's volley, sending each shot right back into his helmet.

Diardo's helmet squealed and cracked under the pressure until it twisted at a harshly unnatural angle all at once. His body collapsed atop Palant's identically.

Coriff charged in once more with Troond. Coriff struck his cortosis blade on the raging red heat of his opponent's, the sound and rancid taste of crackling ozone pouring into the compartment. For a split-second Coriff felt victorious when he pushed the Sith back with raw strength, and seeing Troond hook around to the rear for a supporting attack.

That is, until Coriff's blade _shattered _into two pieces from the strain. He threw himself back to avoid instantaneous decapitation, rolling over his back and ending in a crouching position at the other end of the compartment. To his horror, Troond followed through with his attack unsupported. Ena-Karau joined him – Coriff didn't see him coming, but in the same motion where the Sith turned to face the threat of the Onderonian at his side, he swept low and severed Ena-Karau's legs at the hips.

Troond stabbed once with the bayonet and missed; the rifle was sliced in two. He replied with a straight punch to the jaw, which the Force sorcerer drifted away from in the blink of an eye. He danced around Troond with but one stroke of his lightsaber, cutting through from the right shoulder to the let side of his torso.

Although Coriff scrambled to his feet and charged forward he felt time stop, watching in horror. Troond's inner flesh steamed at first contact with the air, and the two halves of him fell impotently on the deck. The Onderonian's legs twitched impotently, and underneath his shattered faceplate Coriff could see his eyes blink in shock once, twice, then no more.

Coriff tore off his helmet and threw it at the Sith. When he pushed the offending projectile aside with the Force, he saw Coriff pull a lightsaber from his belt and ignite it.

Coriff leapt across the compartment and slammed the green blade down upon the Sith's own red, offending him by coming so close to its hilt.

The weapon was… both familiar and unfamiliar in Coriff's hands. It felt like no other sword he had touched before. But it activated so effortlessly, as if it called on him to be its wielder. The green fire it spouted warmed the side of his face. Its rage became his own rage. And _now_ it was a battle.

Coriff struck once, rolled to the left and swept the blade towards the Sith's legs. But his opponent simply jumped up and brought his own sword crashing down. Coriff rolled to the side, nearly losing a foot in the process, returning to full height with a thrust and a cut.

When Coriff was about to strike once more, he felt a violating grip over the fingers of his right hand. They ignored his calls to obey, becoming torpid, falling open. The laser sword shut down and flew out of his palm straight into the outstretched hand of the Sith.

The next thing Coriff realized was that he had been slammed once more against the wall. The air – his own neck? – sealed itself around the perimeter of his throat and _crushed_ with brutal abandon. Coriff scratched and clawed at his windpipe. He guttered and spat. The vomit-like feeling of pipes shifting and crushing over themselves was inescapable and grew twice as agonizing with each passing moment.

"You amuse me, Republic dog," the Sith chuckled, a lilt in his voice that gave away a sadistic joy. "You think you are a Jedi now, hmm? Playing with Jedi toys?"

The vice-grip tightened yet again. The Sith walked closer, his hand upraised in the pantomime of the choke which Coriff felt so truly that sapped blood to his brain and air to his lungs.

"I should kill you for your insolence. But I have a mind to make you into target practice. You are so _proud_ Republic dog, that it would be so delicious to see just how much pain could take that away."

Coriff's limbs slowly tuned out like static. A wave of still and chill ran from his toes up to his throat, where the passage of sensation was abruptly tightened.

But not gone.

"You will-"

Coriff groaned wetly and whipped his foot back, pressing his heel into the sole of his boot. One satisfying _click_ told him what he could not see: the boot-blade was extended.

He kicked forward now that the Sith was in range. The blade that erupted from the toe of his boot lodged into the sorcerer's inner thigh with a toe-curling squelch of blood and severed vessels.

"AGHH!"

The Sith collapsed on his weak leg and tumbled to the ground. Coriff dropped to his feet and breathed more air than ever before in his life. He turned to run, and-

The Sith, arm outstretched, pushed him violently across the corridor, striking him into the far bulkhead in the adjoining compartment with a sickening crunch. Coriff trained his eyes up, pained and still hazy. The collapsed Sith took his lightsaber back into his hand and threw it like a javelin, directly at his face.

But the blade never arrived. Instead, one end of the red saber lodged fruitlessly into the security door which sealed around it. Trapped in the durasteel just as it had flown in mid-air it produced a cloud of smoke and an orange, flaming ring around itself.

Trask Ulgo sealed the magnetic lock and pulled his friend up by the arm.

"We're getting out of here! Come on!"

Coriff recovered his bearings completely only when they had crossed three more compartments, where each time Trask had permanently set the magnetic locks behind them. They continued in this fashion until they reached a door which had been jammed open.

"Everyone's off the ship. Bastila is away. Carth is waiting for you now. Can you walk?" Trask demanded.

"I can… I can move, but Trask-"

"Get off the ship Coriff. You have a job to do."

Coriff looked at Trask, and at the open door behind them. "No. I can hold him off. You should get out of here sir."

Trask bristled at the formality. "Then consider this a direct order, Gunnery Sergeant Bannick. I'm _telling_ you to get off the _Endar Spire_."

"But…" Coriff's mouth went dry. "You have a family that wants you back, Trask. Get out of here, protect Bastila."

Trask only smiled back at him, sadly. "This door's jammed in anti-lock mode. It'll only close if someone destroys the terminal on the side. I'm going to blow it, and buy you time to get down to Taris."

Trask then withdrew his prized sword – gleaming under the light just like it did before – and held it in a low guard. With two gentle fingers he stroked the razor-sharp blade edge.

"Let me do this," Trask began quietly, "so that I can live up to my name, Coriff. Ulgo men don't back down. When the time comes, we do our duty. Yours is to be on Bastila's security detail. And now mine is to get you there."

Before Coriff could say anything else, Trask whipped the commando's head with the hilt of his blade and shoved him into the next compartment. Before Coriff could stumble back, Trask had already jammed his sword into the door terminal, exploding it and sealing the double-reinforced security door between them.

"_Now do _your_ duty, Coriff!_" Trask's muffled shout came from beyond the door. "_And don't let mine be a waste!_"

%%%

%%%

Coriff knocked twice fast and twice slow on the security door, just like Lieutenant Onasi had instructed him over the communicator.

"You made it just in time! There's only one active escape pod left," Carth gestured to the sole remaining route to the surface.

Coriff saluted sharply. "Did everyone else get out?"

"The ones you sent?" Carth asked. He barely returned the salute.

"How many of them made it?" Coriff asked again.

Carth rubbed his beard and waved towards the corner. Two bodies sat restfully back-to-back. One a female bridge officer, the other a male mechanic, plasgun balanced over the toes of his boots.

"Seventeen made it here, and these two weren't gonna make it… they just passed before you got here, actually," Carth intoned sadly. "You did everything you could, alright? Now let's get out of here. We have a duty to the living."

Coriff nodded slowly, and stepped into the pod, Carth close behind.

"Lieutenant Carth Onasi, am I right?"

"Yeah. I'm a soldier with the Republic just like you. Bastila's already away," Carth tapped a few buttons, and the pod hatch whisked shut behind them. "No reason for us to stick around."

"Then, Lieutenant Onasi…" Coriff sighed. "I'll put my faith in your ace flying I've heard so much about."

His reply came first as a cocky grin. "Call me ace when I get us planetside safely, alright?"

Coriff leaned back and tugged at his seat straps. "Aye aye, sir."


	5. Souls

When the gangs of stevedores and their droids ventured out to meet the incoming ships they moved as one frenzied mass. Alien workers toiled at a nigh-abusive rate under the scrying eyes of their human overseers, to whom any impression of laziness was grounds for immediate firing. Then the next batch of fresh meat would be dragged up out of the Lower City by a headhunter, and it would all keep going with barely a hitch.

Coriff and Bastila sat underneath a stoop, sharing a battered canteen scavenged days ago off the kit of a highly unfortunate Sith patrolman in the Undercity. Coriff had washed it, naturally, and he insisted he would've turned into a rakghoul already each time his offer to share water had been refused by his proud Jedi commander. But Taris was itself a planetary urban heat island, and eventually Bastila Shan grew tired saying "no, I'm fine, I didn't need to bring any" instead of "alright, I'll take some."

She took a deep swig of lukewarm water that felt like the Force itself invigorating her spirit. From their lookout post in the starport overwhelmed with cargo and the throngs of agitated citizens trying to get off planet, Gunnery Sergeant Coriff Bannick and the Jedi Padawan Bastila Shan surveilled the auxiliary entrance to the planetary Sith headquarters. Just beyond those doors lay the key to their escape: IFF codes current with the blockading fleet in orbit. Any ship equipped with those codes could climb out of the atmosphere without attracting the attention of a thousand different naval turbolasers and zip out of range before their operators realized what was going on.

"I would have thought this droid would be ready by now," said Bastila.

"A good droid takes time. Maybe this astromech unit needed a few extra bells and whistles, hm?"

Bastila crossed her arms over her knees. "Maybe so. However I can't say I'm thrilled to be out here staring at a blast door while Carth and the others are waiting in an air-conditioned droid shop."

"Won't argue with that…" Coriff sighed. He pulled out a monocular rangefinder and squinted through the piece. "Sixteen thirty-eight hours, status of closed door… still closed. Color, gray. Locked… yes."

"What were you and Carth doing?" Bastila took another deep gulp of water. "After you crashed on Taris, that is. I'm curious as to what you were doing before we all joined forces."

Coriff stuck the rangefinder back into his tan combat vest. Carth had dumped his uniform and commando armor into a trash incinerator while he was still passed out from their hard landing lest any Sith no-knock raids stumble upon them with damning evidence stuck in the closet. Coriff looked more like an unemployed Mandalorian than a soldier anymore, which fit their mission on Taris nicely.

"Well, before we rescued you, you mean." Coriff smiled and looked over at her, meeting a curious, focused expression with his own bored mirth.

"I managed to free myself, as I recall," Bastila recounted with a forced calmness. "In fact, if I hadn't been there Brejik and his thugs might have killed you in that fight. It's probably more accurate to say that _I_ rescued _you_."

"And you could've taken them all on your own?" Coriff asked, amused.

"That's neither here no there."

"Is it? Can't you just admit that you were rescued, ma'am?"

Bastila huffed and leaned forward, resting her chin on her arms. "You don't have to call me 'ma'am' Gunnery Sergeant Bannick," she muttered.

"If I can't call you ma'am, _ma'am_, then you have to call me Coriff."

"Fair," Bastila conceded. "Very well… I'll admit that I probably wouldn't aver been able to free myself if not for the brawl after the swoop race. I guess I _should_ thank you for that, at least. Actually, your presence at the swoop track is what I'm curious about in the first place. It couldn't have been an easy task to find me there. Yet somehow you managed."

"Carth's an ace pilot and I'm a commando, ma'am-... _Bastila_," Coriff paused. "It's our job. We were assigned to keep you safe and so that's what we're doing. And now we're gonna get you off this planet."

"You also avoided detection by the Sith, discovered I was a Vulkar prisoner, gained sponsorship for the race and became the Taris swoop champion. That's quite a resume, even for a commando."

"I had a lot of help. Carth, Mission, and Zaalbar made it all possible. You would be a slave and I would be a rotting Undercity corpse or a rancor's toothpick without them."

"Your modesty is admirable," Bastila soothed, "but though others helped, you were the catalyst for these events. When you were chosen to join this mission, I doubt any of us expected this much from you. A Jedi could have done such things of course. But only by drawing heavily upon the Force."

"What do you mean by _chosen_? All of Gundark Platoon was assigned as your close protection group…" Coriff faltered, "I'm just the only who made it to the surface alive. _Chosen_," Coriff snorted.

Bastila hitched. "Well I- I suppose I _mis-spoke_…" she paused. "You were _all_ chosen for your skill, but of course I had the opportunity to review personnel files. You stuck out, surely, but I wouldn't have assumed that even an elite soldier could manage to do all the things you've accomplished, let alone a Force user."

"I think you're underestimating us non-Jedi," Coriff stated plainly.

"Perhaps. But the Force works through all of us to some degree or another. There are some individuals outside the Jedi Order that we considered 'Force Sensitive'. It's obvious to me that the Force has been working through you. There is no other explanation for your great success, though I am not certain what to make of this discovery. Perhaps if you weren't-" Bastila fussed. "Well, if you were _younger_ the Jedi might take you for training, but as it is…"

Just as the idea had been raised into the conversation, its nascent suggestion was strangled in the manger when Bastila let those words hang in the air. She shifted in her seated position uncomfortably.

"What are you trying to say, Bastila?"

"I'm sorry. I've overstepped my authority. I'm speaking of things that are best left to the Jedi Council. For now let's just accept the fact that you are… gifted. Hopefully between your abilities, my Jedi training and the skills of our companions we can find a way off this planet."

"Every member of Gundark Platoon is- _was_ gifted Bastila. I don't think you realize that."

Bastila shook her head. "You misunderstand my words. What I meant was that-"

"No, I think I know what you meant," Coriff admonished. "But we were assigned to you because we're the _best_. And I think you underestimated us since the beginning. Remember that inspection? Not long after we all came aboard? We thought you were disgusted with us. The men were gossiping in the armory about how you must've thought we were a worthless escort for your… _Jedi_-ness."

Bastila's mouth opened and closed a few trials before words pushed their way out. "That is _not_ true, I- you-… you were all assigned to me because of your skills, yes. And _yes_, I was not and am still not comfortable with the idea of having bodyguards. So you can forgive me if I didn't quite know how to deal with you gentlemen."

"You didn't have to deal with us, Bastila, it just would've helped if you ever came by to introduce yourself or say hello. Every single one of us was ready to die for you if that was required," Coriff paused a heavy beat, "and every single one but me _did_ die for you on that ship. A Sith Lord wiped us out buying time for you and everyone else to get to the escape pods."

Bastila's voice shed some of its defiant tone for a moment. "A Sith Lord?" she asked quietly. "You mean to tell me you and your men took on a _Sith_?"

"We did."

"Did you…"

He shook his head sadly. Coriff had the face of a man who stood on battlements on nights when the moon was out, wondering if old comrades were sharing that glow somewhere else.

"Barely scratched him. I stabbed him once but it was a lucky shot. I had been attacking him with a lightsaber. I think that really pissed him off."

"A _lightsaber_?" Bastila choked. "W-where did you get a lightsaber from? Did you even know how to _use_ one!? You could've killed yourself!"

"I found it off a dead Jedi in the portside compartments. And sure, I guess I might've hurt myself with it, but you can forgive me if I was a bit more concerned with the _Sith Lord_ slaughtering my men than whether or not I was safe using the only weapon I had left!"

Bastila's mouth straightened into a thin line. "I suppose you fought with everything you had, didn't you?"

"Of course I did. Hell, I was _ready_ to die. I was expecting it. But I had a job to do, just like all of them did. Just like Trask did…"

Bastila swallowed.

Coriff took a sip of water and spied the door again.

"I'm sorry if my words sounded dismissive Coriff. I am deeply grateful for what you and your men did," Bastila started. "But _you_ alone made it this far. You survived a fight with a Sith Lord, wielding a _lightsaber_ no less, and then accomplished even more to find me and get to this point."

"It was blind chance. I helped train those men. Any of them would have at least made it this far."

The way Coriff deliberately inspected his blaster rifle indicated his belief that the subject was exhausted.

"Then… I won't speak any more of it for now. Just know that there is a spark of greater potential within you. I believe it is the Force. Maybe it isn't. Either way, you are destined for more than you know. Such is the will of the Force."

Bastila was glad that Carth, Mission, and Zaalbar arrived with the droid to grab Coriff's attention so that he could not watch the shock spill into her face at her over-sharing. She breathed a sigh of relief when it appeared he hadn't been listening to the last part, jumping up to meet their arriving comrades.

"This thing had better be a Basilisk for all the cooking in the sun you made us do waiting for it," Coriff said.

Mission patted the flat dome head of the astromech unit, who chirped and beeped gleefully in response. A lock-picking module stuck out of his chest plate; its agile tumbler manipulators flicked up and down like the fingers of an over-excited child.

"His name is T3-M4. Teethree, this is Coriff, your new owner. You already know our mission, don't you?" Mission cooed.

"Dwooooo. Beep-beep boop beep."

"You're confident, I'll give you that. If you live up to it, I think we have a permanent spot on our team for you little buddy," Coriff replied.

The auxiliary entrance of the Sith headquarters was more or less ignored by the guard patrols, and the arrival of the whole group was fortuitously timed so that they had five minutes to get inside before the next pair of sentries would amble by.

T3 went straight to work. A remote scrambler popped out of his chest plate and fried the door camera. He zipped over to the door on his lithe wheels with cartoonish speed. It was scarcely fifteen seconds until the neglected security door groaned open for the team of intruders. T3 wheeled around in a joyous circle blabbing away triumphantly at his first victory.

Coriff led the team inside, leaving T3 out front to re-seal the door until their return. If any sentries came calling, he would act natural and pretend he was fixing a busted ID reader. Coriff gently kicked at the droid's leg before he went in.

"Hey. Nice work, little guy."

When Coriff rejoined the team in the lobby of the base there was an imminent factor that had not yet been considered.

Zaalbar had his bowcaster aimed at a base secretary, a frightened Rutian Twi'lek whose lekku twitched, her finger hovering dangerously above a panic button.

"Y-you're not supposed to be in here! You had better tell me what you're doing or I'm going to hit the alarm!"

Zaalbar and the others looked to Coriff. Once the Twi'lek realized this was the man in charge, she summoned up her will and fired a glare at him.

"We're just here for a meeting, ma'am," Coriff intoned coolly.

"Nice try buddy, I'm not stupid! This is a secure installation. Even if you kill me the guards will just rush straight in!" She finished perhaps too quickly.

But Coriff instead wore a genial smile. He dropped his blaster rifle – the old Sith A-38C clattered on the floor drawing shocked glances from the rest of the team. He took a single daring step forward, then another, and another after that once it was clear the Twi'lek hadn't entirely thought _her_ plan through either.

"This job can't pay much, can it? I know non-humans are treated awfully in the Upper City," Coriff wheedled. "You're a brave woman. The Sith don't deserve your loyalty for the pittance I'm sure you're getting."

Coriff reached into his pockets.

"How does two hundred and fifty credits sound, huh? You get out of here, sell the uniform to someone shady, and look for a safer line of work."

"A-are you serious? Two hundred and fifty… that's nearly two months' pay here! You've got a deal," the Twi'lek chattered. She tapped a few buttons on her computer console. "The Sith have made my life a living hell ever since they took over this base."

She abandoned her post and ran to Coriff, wrapping him in an exuberant hug. "I would have quit when the Sith took over! I wanted no part in this. But they wouldn't let me leave..."

Coriff chuckled and handed her the credit chip. The receptionist held it up to her cheek like a babe.

"You know, it's about time someone stood up to these Sith! Just do me a favor and wait until I'm out of here until you start blasting the place up, alright? Here, I even left the terminal unlocked for you. Feel free to do whatever you want with the security system."

And with that she was gone out the door.

Bastila and Carth stared at their companion. The former bore a shocked expression whereas the latter had a big smirk which threatened to devolve into sputtering laughter if he looked on any longer.

Coriff shrugged casually. "Well, let's take a look. I'm curious as to what's behind that door," Coriff pointed to the thick security hatch to their left while scooping up his rifle from the ground.

The receptionist's terminal was indeed unlocked, and it had access to every single security camera in the base, not to mention an interesting suite of controls for the detachment of war droids patrolling the halls. It even had override controls for the electrical systems. Coriff had picked those up with a keen eye, and those options might not have been so obvious to any regular user.

But Sith terminals were generally modeled after Republic terminals, which were designed with self-destructed protocols in case a station was being overrun and saw fit to take themselves out with the enemy rather than surrender. Dying for your country in such a way was nothing less than honorable.

"Let's give some of these Sith a chance to die for their empire, eh?" Coriff chuckled. With Mission peering over his shoulder offering advice, the pair set off most of the base's electrical overload systems, set the war droids to target each other, and flatly shut down a nasty looking sentry bot guarding an elevator.

Satisfied at the chaos they had wreaked, Coriff switched over to the door camera. T3 was hard at work looking busy, making entirely superfluous welds in and around the locking mechanism. Enough to make a passer-by think that a critical repair was in progress. Coriff keyed into the microphone.

"_Hey buddy! Nice work. We're inside now. Mission and Zaalbar are gonna stay at this terminal to keep an eye on everything, and the rest of us will go get the codes. Hang in there!_"

Coriff smiled at T3's initial confusion, and then his little circular dance of joy. He'd barely known the little astromech for ten minutes and it was already growing on him.

Lastly, he switched over to the camera observing the side room just five feet away. It had no large terminal capable of overloading, but Mission was able to re-route a power surge through a wall conduit that wiped out the gaggle of Sith soldiers within anyhow. With their flanks safe, Coriff, Bastila, and Carth pressed on into the base. Mission and Zaalbar waited at the receptionist's station, warning them of enemy movements over the camera microphone system.

Progressing through the base was an easy affair after most of the garrison had been wiped clean by Mission and Coriff's clever manipulation of the electrical system. What few solitary war droids remained after their friend-or-foe identification had been scrambled were easy pickings for the trio of skilled fighters.

Clearing out the armory was the first priority – Coriff insisted that a reliable supply of grenades and medpacs never hurt to keep around, and any expensive gear was worth pilfering to be sold off on the Lower City black market later. They swept through the prison wing, whose only occupant at the time was the kind Duros that Coriff and Carth had met and rescued near their apartment at the start of their ordeal on Taris. His name was Kezuh, and just like before he owed a debt which in his words "he could never repay in ten lifetimes."

Kezuh was sent back along the route the team had cleared behind them to wait with Mission and Zaalbar for their eventual return. A lone Duros skulking out of a Sith base right after a defecting receptionist might have generated too much attention.

Only the grand prize remained. Carth wielding his twin blasters stacked up behind Coriff, who dug the stock of a stolen Sith assault blaster into his shoulder. Bastila inhaled deeply before the ornate Sith door. On the floorplan it showed up as the governor's personal chambers. Naturally he would be holding such a vital prize as orbital IFF launch codes in a secure area.

Bastila looked over at Coriff, double-bladed lightsaber clutched tightly in her hands. He acknowledged her with a cocky wink.

"_Showtime_," he mouthed.

Coriff and Carth were the first inside. Defying a basal instinct to orbit around the perimeter of the room to gain firing angles, they remained shoulder-to-shoulder between the kneeling Sith ahead of them and the Republic's last hope behind them. The click and whine of three blasters mingled in the air with a two-tone _snap-hiss._

If the room's owner was in any way cowed by the odds, nothing in his bullish, commanding voice betrayed it.

"Who _dares_ to break my meditation?" He rose from the cold steel floor, curling fingers tainted with dark veins around the handle of a brilliant gold and silver double-bladed vibrosword. "You will pay for disturbing my…"

His scowl and speech hesitated at the same moment once he turned and put his eyes on the intruders. His jaw worked into a buoyant molesting grin. "Wait… I sense the Force is strong with you. _Very_ strong. Who would have thought a Force Adept could be found on this insignificant planet? But your talent is no match for a disciple of the dark side!"

"You'll find that the Jedi are more than you can handle, _Sith!_" Bastila snarled from behind her impromptu bodyguards. "Surrender."

The Sith only raised his brow, following up a brief pause with a slow baritone chuckle, the laughter of shattered propriety such as would follow the excessively loud crashing of fine china. Bastila's sneering bite and predatory will evaporated into dry, disgusted confusion. In her heart, she already knew.

"I know that _you_ are wanted, 'Commander' Shan. But I speak of this one," an imperious finger aimed itself at Coriff's stony grit. From behind that man, Bastila's jaw chewed in silent anguish. "_He_ is nothing short of remarkable. In fact I felt him when he entered this base."

The Sith's grin shed some of its scathing intensity. There was something… _warm_ about it next he spoke, "I am the fortunate one, that you both made it so far. Killing you will be an _accolade_."

Bastila's mind fought to shear away the bondage of self control. Her indignity flared in invisible whips. _He is the remarkable one? I am _Bastila Shan! _He is not- he cannot be- there is not enough of him left! Not now… I… he _cannot_ be…_

"You Sith must be brought to judgement. Surrender immediately or we _will_ kill you. I'm not asking twice," Coriff demanded.

"You are a fool – this is a new age! The Sith shall be the ones passing judgement now! We are the new order of the galaxy! This is a stroke of luck for me…" the Sith drabbled wistfully. "First, an assignment as governor. And now two Force-sensitives and a war hero in my lair to slaughter? My master will surely reward me with my light-"

Whatever had been said next was drowned out by the thumping call of a Sith blaster rifle. Its euphonic scream and lashing red fire scattered off of the governor's open palm like toy fireworks around a wall.

Coriff screamed a bloody war cry. In the blink of an eye, his rifle flipped around in his arms and was held to the side, the buttstock-side out like a war club with his left arm, his right hand clasped around the bloodied and rusty handle of a chipped vibro-bayonet. 

Carth was in support – his blasters chimed in unison, forcing the Sith governor to divide his efforts in parrying the commando's attack and the ace pilot's volley. Coriff's rifle came across in a wide slicing arc which failed to connect with the Sith's skull, albeit such was the expected result. The governor was forced to slip to the side, raising his double-blade to cut the approaching rifle in two.

Instead of retreating, Coriff twisted through to the right as if completing his first attack, and sprung back to the left with his bayonet charging down towards the governor's throat. Coriff's left leg shuffled forward and he grabbed on to the handle of the vibro-sword, catching himself inside the Sith's sword arm inside the angle of possible attack.

Inches from its target, the bayonet froze in mid-air. It strained in place. The Sith had grabbed Coriff's wrist and with incredible power saw fit to crush down on it with the Force. Coriff poured everything he had into his right arm and hissed through the pain; the governor smiled darkly.

"Potential doesn't equal talent."

It felt like awakening to his senses for the first time. Suddenly the governor's chamber was frigid. A draining chill emanated from the walls and sterile sea-blue computer panels that infested Coriff's bones down to their very marrow. Fear. A virus. The governor stared into his eyes and the flash of his yellow irises spoke like the eruption of a sun. Coriff's own flesh felt infected by a noxious glow. Frozen. Melting. Burning from the sheer cold.

Coriff's fingers wrenched open from the titanic, crushing strain inflicted against the bones of his wrist. Once the bayonet fell pathetically upon the deck, he was thrown aside in a wanton blast of energy. The wall had caught him – he crawled up feebly off of the floor while Carth and Bastila moved in.

Jedi blade fell upon vibro-sword in a spark and clash in the exact same moment that Carth was thrown aside, limbs twisted akimbo. The visceral crunch left no doubt for major injury. Bastila and the governor traded hurricanes of blows. Coriff pulled himself to unsteady, shivering feet. He regarded the unfolding duel bursting in slants and blurs no more corporeal to his eyes than the lights of a passing train.

Coriff felt gravid with the anticipation of future battle even as second flushed after second like the cables of an anchor without any depth to settle upon. He was all but transfixed on the sight once more of two Force-sensitives – _mages _– laying thunder upon more thunder in each violent crash.

As if brushing aside an old drunken friend to remind them who was still in charge, the Sith governor parried Bastila's next strike down into the floor. When blade met scorching, melting steel plate, the Sith's boot came down upon her grip and crushed fingers. Bastila had no time to shout – the next movement was his left knee invigorated with the Force driving into her chin. She reeled back, recalling the saber into her hand, nursing a pained snout while allowing the wall to heave more than a little of the burden of her weight. Sweat coursed down her face. Her chest plowed rhythmic breath into her body.

Bastila charged.

And so did Coriff.

His blade, a straight foil once stored in a belt loop, struck upon the governor's at the same moment Bastila's sunset yellow. The Sith governor reeled back and adjusted his guard whereupon he stood ready to receive his opponents once again. No true Sith could object to the renown of winning a good, uneven fight. Or better, one that only _seemed _uneven. And for all his efforts in the span of two minutes he wounded two of three intruders – and the third, it seemed, clung only to a slippery degree of energy and discipline.

When Coriff and Bastila charged again, it was not in a uniform motion, but an undisciplined haze of anger and panic. Both fighters suppressed the noise of want for the copious draughts of air their bodies demanded of them. But so long as any fight could be psychological as much as physical, they refused any outward indicators of pressure.

Bastila found herself kicked again – she was drawn into a feint, deflected, and slammed viciously at the gut by a perfectly landed boot. She rolled back, and although she came to a stop in a raptor's crouch there was no subduing a bout of wet gasps and coughs. Coriff moved in. His muscles swelled, his heart pumped, everything strained to throw more power upon the Sith governor than he might handle.

But any attack, at any speed and with any force was like tossing stones at the rampart of a fortress. Coriff could no longer strike. It was merely a physical impossibility. Any movement of his blade which predicated an attack was slapped away in the manner of a parent cheerfully displacing the over-reach of a child.

And then fury came upon him in turn: his arms cried out, his spine shivered, and his gut churned inward at the reptilian fantasy of near death. He moved as fast as his body would be commanded by the flood of adrenaline which now seized him. The sword buzzed with each deflected strike and the vibrations numbed his hands to sensation. If he moved any slower for any movement he would be short a limb.

Until he was bold again. Coriff ground his teeth together, planning a combination seconds in advance, and laying upon his enemy with a stabbing flurry whose speed opposed to its wrath might push through. His blade slipped perilously over the Sith's shoulder, deflected at just the last minute, and it spun around-

"_GHUGK!_"

Coriff's sword flew out of his hand. There was no guard to the follow-up of the other dual blade tearing through his vest. His hand. Another wave.

_One…_

_Two…_

_Three…_

Like a thousand times before, Coriff centered his mind on a count of breaths. His hand stretched out towards the ceiling, idly curious if their soft fluorescence could be touched.

_I'm… I'm on the other side of the room?_

Groaning in exhausted agony, Coriff barely raised his head enough to see. Bastila resumed the attack, drawing fuel from a yet-unrevealed well of energy that propelled her body once more into the fray.

Lifting his arms was too much work. So he laid his hands restfully on his chest. While the battle re-emerged with a precipitating harshness Coriff rolled over onto his side and bullied his eyes to stay open. He felt very little, in that moment, except a faint gnawing sensation that emerged from the font of a trickling river whose flow tickled his neck.

Coriff looked at his palms. Stained red and black. And then he looked down, and gurgled in sympathy to the explosive rinse of crimson that began to the lower left of his torso and ended just beneath his right shoulder.

_One…_

_Two…_

_Three…_

A hunted animal's trail of red painted on the wall traced his slow and agonizing climb. Two legs bowed inward and promised they would collapse if subject to anything more. Beads of sweat arranged themselves on all his exposed skin in the most orderly biological pattern, that when Coriff noticed it and the white pallor over which they rested, he had to swallow a thread of vomit.

His gaze swerved like a wind-blown vane into the battle, drawn by the gravity of its nauseating noise and stupefying intensity. When he had blinked, it wiped away a fraction of the chaos, and instead of four pairs of Sith and Bastilas, there were only two, and in a moment just one pair in mortal combat.

Bastila stepped back, narrowly avoiding the lethal slice of her enemy's blade. She crouched beneath a wide horizontal cut, and from her low position sprung into a downward strike which never came.

The Sith's hands went out at the same time. Coriff winced from the blast of energy that shook the room, when Bastila thudded violently against the doorframe. A high-pitched shriek woke both he and Carth from their painful stupor; their strongest ally was now no-factor.

She groaned and sobbed just from the sheer _pain_ the impact had inflicted. Her arms defied the ground valiantly but each increasingly pathetic attempt to rise ended with her crashing face-first into the cold and unfeeling steel. Carth sat himself against the wall – his eyes narrowed and he fired off another burst of shots from twin blasters.

But as all had before, these scattered meaninglessly around the Sith governor's hand and dissolved in sparks. Both weapons were torn from the pilot's hands with the Force and slid across the floor far outside of his reach. The governor stalked over his prey, whose arm weakly dragged with lightsaber in hand.

The Sith stomped on her arm and bellowed insidious laughter at the pained yelp it elicited. He took the released dual saber and clipped it to his belt.

"Perhaps I will simply take this as my own… no better proof to my master that I have triumphed, hmm?"

Coriff no longer saw Bastila, Carth, and the governor.

_Otaron's body clattered limply upon the deck. Ena-Karau was a crumpled mass pinned by his own blade at the joint of the far bulkhead and the doorway. His boys, his men who he had trained for this mission. The men who followed him into battle were cast aside as unwanted dolls. _

_Heads rolled upon the deck still trapped in their helmets. Death rattles caught by the tacnet were carried over the waves and entered Coriff's ears. These were the lamentations from the beyond for his leadership. For the mission._

_Men died with him for the mission. Trask, Besh Squad, the rest of the platoon, and every other soul entombed with the scorched ashes of that cruiser. A mountain of slaughter for the mission. To win._

_The Sith Lord raised his crimson double-blade over the prostrate form of Bastila Shan. Of Trask Ulgo. Of all the men and women he should have protected. All dead for the mission._

_And the mission was right there. She was all that was left._

_What they would die for._

_What _he_ would die for._

_One…_

_Two…_

_Three…_

Coriff traced his hand along the wall for support as long as he could reach it. At the apex of his extension he pushed off of the wall slightly, leaning forward and clutching his pouring gash until he mustered the strength to clutch it no longer.

His eyes locked forward.

_One…_

_Two…_

_Three…_

_A voice Coriff remembered at the bare steerage of his mind shouted into him. It reminded Coriff what needed to be done and how it would be done. So what if he was cut open? Men had been wounded before. Men had been killed before._

_Men far worse than Coriff were ripped apart and pushed through._

"_CANDIDATE ONE-SEVEN-ONE! ARE YOU INJURED?"_

"_No!" He croaked._

"_ARE YOU INJURED OR DOES IT JUST HURT?"_

_He keeled over and gasped. Nothing came out, not even the wispy string of bile like before._

"_It just hurts!"_

_The instructor slapped him clear across the face. He kept moving. He kept moving forward and forward and forward even through the pain and even when it hurt and gods and stars above how it hurt but he moved and moved._

Coriff stood between them now. Bastila croaked behind him in surprise. The governor was nothing if not pleased.

"You are quite the specimen, soldier. It is a shame you will die today, otherwise I might have taken you as an apprentice."

He laughed when he brought the blade down.

_One…_

_Two…_

_Three…_

_Work. Work and complete the mission. There was nothing more to do._

And it coursed through him.

When the blade came down and Coriff slid to the right as a phantom would, he looked into the Sith governor's eyes and saw he would no longer be laughing.

When the blade came through and around in a flurry of strikes and each one flowed around him like the obnoxious buzz of a fly which refused to land, he looked at the governor and knew that in that moment he had taken his soul.

The blade moved in front of him. _Moved_. Not like a ghost but at an entirely reasonable speed, which he deftly rolled under and caught at the handle. He yanked back and head-butted his shocked opponent, who had just received his first lick of the whole engagement.

"You don't want to be where I am, motherfucker," Coriff spat.

_One…_

_Two…_

_Three…_

Coriff head-butted him three more times which drew a field of stars over the Sith's vision and erupted a violent river of blood down his face. Instantly Coriff tossed the double vibrosword away and struck with his first. A jab and a cross, and hook after hook after hook. An uppercut, and then a knee.

The Sith's armor warped with a _clang_ under his strikes. Each attack drew a wet grunt and each to the face resulted in another bruise and cut. Blood trickled out of a dozen new sources on the Sith governor's once cocky face.

At tenterhooks to remain at least on his feet and dazed from the sheer intensity of assault the governor threw up his palms, unable to match the speed and ferocity of the attack but invariably desperate to stem it in any way. He imparted Fear on the Republic soldier. He invoked the ancestral terror that lurked in the primordial brains of all sentients to flee, run, escape.

He expected Coriff to scream and cower. All the last victims had.

Coriff stared at him, unblinking. His physical assault paused only for the moment which he registered the attempted intrusion of his mind by way of the Force and resumed his barbarity in all its absolute, disgusting collision.

Coriff followed the Sith governor to the ground when he fell. He'd thrown a few meager counter-attacks of his own, and in the split-seconds that went on for ages in his mind, Coriff either recognized them as impotent and took them on the chin or shifted deftly out of the way, aligning himself one degree right or left so that the stray fist would only streak away. Nothing interrupted his barrage of straight fists.

Bastila panted when she climbed to her knees. The imminent threat had passed, which she could tell from the hailing noise of combat that descended away from her at the other side of the room. Only with the aid of the Force was she able to stand, leaning against a computer terminal for aid. Carth, too, finally dragged himself to his feet.

Limping, but on his feet.

_One…_

_Two…_

_Three…_

"Coriff! Stop!" Bastila shouted.

It felt like hours later when Coriff ceased the machinelike motion of his arms. They cried out for more battle, for more work. A surplus of energy rippled along the surface veins and shouted for every muscle to keep going.

He choked on his own breath when he saw his wound.

He choked again when he saw the wounds recently inflicted.

Knuckle skin was ground almost completely to the bone. Blood from two men dyed every inch of skin from the fingertips to the forearm. His hands looked as if they hada been dragged through Hell's brimstone. And beneath him, an unmoving cadaver lay in state from which could be roused not one sign of life.

There was nothing to recognize. Nothing but old features of a once-living face, ground into the bowl of a head like a drawing on paper crumpled up and tossed into a wastebasket.

Coriff breathed deeply. Left alone to his devices he might sweep the room and ensure completion of the tasks at hand but at the moment felt somewhat liberated to attend his own needs. He stood up, backed away, and reached into one of the intact pockets of his combat vest for gauze. Salves? Maybe stitches.

"I think the codes are around here somewhere, Bastila," Carth chuckled. "I'll watch the door. Maybe check those footlockers."

Bastila eyed the man before her.

"Good thing he's on our side, huh?" Carth whistled.

It was recognition that flashed in her eyes.


	6. Dantooine

_Mission Vao snatched the frag grenade out of the air and lobbed it back at its original owner. Zaalbar wrapped himself around her like a giant furry suit of armor against stray fragments even as they took cover behind the base secretary's terminal. Kezuh was right beside them, babbling a storm of curses in his native tongue almost as vicious as the barrage of blasterfire he poured blindly down the access corridor their attackers were emerging from._

_When that heavy repeater slid across the floor from the hands of a Sith heavy trooper impaled on the wall by a shot from Zaalbar's bowcaster, Kezuh had not hesitated to commence his revenge. Mission was crouched under the desk when the Duros stood up in full view of the enemy and blasted no fewer than six Sith troopers until being forced back into cover when she decided that she didn't mind the extra help. Kezuh and Zaalbar held off the soldiers, and Mission did everything she could with the computer terminal._

"_Mission! Mission, are you there?" Carth's voice crackled over the communicator suppressed by the whine of scrambled blasterfire._

_The Twi'lek crawled up the terminal only high enough to see the camera feeds, wary of the enemy's persistent firing. "Carth!? Where's Bastila? Where's Coriff? This place is crawling with Sith! We need to get out of here!"_

_A muffled shout and a burst of fire. "No shit Mission! Dammit, agh-" there was a scraping noise followed by scratching of a microphone on skin. "Hold on Carth, I got you!"_

"_What's going on over there? What happened?" Mission shouted._

"_Carth's hurt. Having trouble getting around. I've got him. Is the door clear?" Coriff asked so casually Mission wondered if she had mis-heard him, and he was only asking for the time._

"_Clear so far!" Mission ducked another burst of enemy fire. Zaalbar roared and sent his own volley back, placing himself between his Twi'lek friend and the line of fire. "Not sure how long it'll stay that way!"_

"_Alright. We'll be there soon. I think the whole Sith QRF just came down on our heads!"_

"_The what?"_

"_QRF is…" Coriff grunted and yelled something incoherent. Between his cool tone Mission read the undertones of strain. He was breathing heavy. "It's the Quick Reaction Force. Shock troops. Can you lock some of these doors back down?"_

"_I-I can do that… let me see…"_

"_Service door at passageway… six! Shut it down!"_

"_Hold on… hold on…" Mission navigated the byzantine control systems on the terminal. Finding any one door took a few moments. "Service door at six. And… shut down!"_

"_You're a lifesaver, Mission," Coriff breathed. "I'm gonna leave my mic hot so you can keep track of us. If we need you to do something from up at that terminal we can just call it out, alright?" The blasterfire seemed to die down on his end._

"_You got it. Just get here as fast as you can, okay? Is Carth hurt?"_

"_Agh, he's… not too bad. Walking wounded. Just took a fall. I've got one unconscious with me, I'm carrying them on my back," he huffed. "Limp bodies aren't too cooperative with distributing their bodyweight."_

"_Wh- unconscious? Bastila? Is Bastila alright!?" Mission shouted._

"_No! It's not her. She's fine. Clearing our flank with that lightsaber of hers. I'm taking up point is all…"_

_Mission nursed that pregnant pause and worked her jaw, wracked with anxiety at half of the tem having to fight their way out of a whole Sith base yet finding nothing worth saying about it._

"_Roger that Coriff. Stay safe."_

"_You too."_

_Zaalbar and Kezuh maintained their steady fire down the service corridor and protected Mission sufficiently enough to let her stay on the console full-time, only now and again ducking under stray shots. Coriff's communicator picked up the harsh report of his blasterfire in short, precise bursts and the chaotic whizzing of ceaseless return fire._

_Mission saw Coriff and Carth working their way through the base with a man's body drawn over the commando's shoulders. She squinted at the low-resolution display and wondered at the state of Coriff's armored vest – the colors were washed in a mute blue on the display but the vest was barely holding together and stained with… something. Whatever it was, it didn't appear that Coriff was letting it slow him down. Even while fireman carrying one body and sweeping the corridors in front of him with a scavenged submachine blaster he was moving about as fast as Mission could've expected anyone else to, given the tenacious Sith resistance._

_Behind them, Bastila retreated in careful cadence like a graceful dancer. Her double-bladed lightsaber deflected away every single incoming shot – the men ahead of her had nothing to worry about in terms of an attack from the rear. Even in the camera she was cool and unfazed, just like when Mission first met her. She caught herself wondering if anything could break that steely discipline._

_Soon they were outside of the cameras' coverage. A whole section's worth had been knocked out by their electrical overloading stunts and now all Mission could do was hear the chatter of blasterfire and terse commands Carth and Coriff made to each other and imagine._

"_Shoot, shoot! Over by the stairs!" Carth yelled._

"_Damn…" a muffled fwoosh and a barrage of return fire. "He's got a flamethrower!"_

_The Twi'lek's eyes shot open._

"_Mission! Shut off passageway five-eight!"_

"_I got it!"_

_A moment later, Coriff breathed a desperate affirmative and reiterated her lifesaver status. The blasterfire picked up again but it sounded more like Carth and Coriff's weapons than the enemy. Maybe they were moving fast enough to get a drop on the Sith blocking forces before they were ready._

"_We're cut off! The enemy's at panel B!"_

_Mission desperately scanned the terminal for any reference to control panels._

"_Your left… left! Carth, use your hand grenade!" Coriff bellowed._

_A shattering blast whined over the communicator; Mission clutched her ears._

"_Path of retreat's been cut off… left or right?"_

_More blasterfire._

"_Left! Left is clear!" Carth yelled, firing off bursts of two and four shots._

"_Mission!" Coriff called. "Shut down passageway two-eight! We're going down one-eight!"_

"_Alright, alright…" Mission whispered to herself. Back to the door controls. "Shut down."_

"_Break through! Break through!" Coriff yelled._

_Over the din of incessant back-and-forth shooting a new voice appeared, picked up by Coriff's microphone in the close-quarters fighting._

"_Are you sure we're moving fast enough? We can't do anything for him if we're dead!" Bastila yelled._

"_For the last time we are not leaving him! Carth, on your right! There!"_

_Mission noticed a lull in the fighting around her and swiveled her head around. Kezuh and Zaalbar stared down the service corridor, weapons shouldered and charged. Only dead Sith in their metallic black uniforms spangled those floors – their comrades were regrouping._

"_You guys better get here soon! I think we can get out of here but only if you hurry!" Mission implored._

"_We're working on- AGH!" Coriff was cut off. More shouting and a reverie of gunfire from Carth's pistols overpowered his stifled groan on the net. A lightsaber hummed viciously above, like the rumbling of a guard hound._

"_Coriff! Are you alright? Do you need to put him down?" Bastila asked in her best commander's tone. In the heat of battle Mission picked up the strain attempting to shear off her stone façade._

"_I've got him… just a scratch! Come on, keep moving, we're almost there- Carth! Right!"_

"_I can carry him if you need me to-"_

"_Bastila! I can see the last corridor! Clear the way!" His blaster roared fire again and overpowered the mic._

_Mission didn't know she was shaking until Zaalbar wrapped his furry arms around her to still her movement. Both he and Kezuh looked at her expectantly as the only one in the room with a communicator. She stuttered._

"_Th- they're coming. And it looks like they're bringing someone with them."_

_No more Sith came charging down with blasters blazing for the silent few minutes they waited. The din of battle drifted closer and closer, echoing down the walls. Kezuh and Zaalbar stood ready with weapons charged, and Mission held a finger over the terminal ready to lock down all of the doors behind them._

_Carth was the first one through. He walked close to the wall using one hand to brace himself, unsteady on wounded legs that would no doubt take a dip into a kolto tank to help reset._

"_Is everyone alright here Mission?" Carth wheezed._

_As he had predicted, she followed up a hasty confirmation with a battery of questions as to what they had just faced, who did they find, was Coriff alright, was Bastila alright, and any alternative permutation of those. Carth tried to look lazy when he leaned up against the wall, sporting a practiced smirk and a disinterested gaze down the corridor. What was done was done, and there was no need to give Mission anything else to worry about. They were alive. They would get out. They would get off of Taris. There would be better times for him to drop the story of their recent brush with death atop her head, when it wasn't so selfish to get sympathy for his legs or credit for taking down a ranking Sith._

"_Mission! Seal the door!" Came a man's haggard shout._

_Coriff ran the length of the corridor and almost collapsed on the secretary's desk – Bastila close behind, deflecting a few parting shots before the security door whipped shut in front of her face._

"_Who is this?" Zaalbar asked, taking Coriff's arm to lessen the strain of carrying himself, already heavily wounded, and the unconscious body over his shoulders._

_The commando turned halfway around so that everyone could see. The man's face was an ugly spread of purple, red, and black from a battery of wounds that must have accumulated over a long, torturous session. A stained hospital gown was the body's only adornment, whose ratty and uncomfortable material shifted with each destitute breath. Blood had dried over his skull, creating a band which framed his platinum crew-cut like the frame of a crown._

_He was a man close to his death; the telltale streaks of viscous kolto-infused medical suspension gel drying on his paled skin marked him as such. Coriff looked distantly towards another time and place, his skin just as white and the gaping wound over his chest, recklessly bandaged over and treated with a single medpac, still oozing thick red waves into his clothes. The faint stench of burned skin and fabric could have been traced to the hole melted into his vest's right shoulder. It was blackened and warped inward from a lucky shot which only by a higher act glanced instead of threshing into the bone, severing limb from body. _

_Coriff laid him down on the desk entirely disinterested in his own wounds even as his legs shuddered. A masterwork sword was strapped to his hip, standing out from the blood-soaked pants and combat vest which were now well distressed from the battle. Mission was about to shout at Coriff's stupidity for not letting someone treat him that very instant when he raised one preemptive finger to hush that concern. He looked at Zaalbar._

"_His name is Trask Ulgo and we're getting him off of Taris. Now help me move him."_

%%%

%%%

The sterility of the room disgusted him. All of the filtered air and the gleaming clinical surfaces should have been the setting of another man's life. Not the life of this man. Coriff was pained by how _alright_ everything was. At how the Jedi healers smiled and took his arm and tempered all of his concerns when they hauled Trask in on the hovering gurney. At how little machines and data readouts beeped from time to time with their scheduled reports and spoke with an algebra whose key Coriff had never learned. At how everyone said he was a hero for plucking a Republic officer out of a Sith medical bay on an occupied world. At how everything and everyone seemed to look on him with a kind of pitiless insouciance: Coriff did everything he could, he did a great job, and surely Trask would be okay, it wasn't the end of the world, of course being target practice for Sith on Korriban was a worse fate than death, and none of this was his fault.

When the Jedi nurse came by on his rounds, he put his hands on Trask and let them glow, casting his immaterial spell that in some way or form helped him keep on living. Then he observed the computer displays and "uhumed" at the results he so clearly expected, smiled at Coriff, and moved on. That Jedi knew Trask was going to die. Coriff knew it too - if not from the blackened regions of skin and the dozen or so entry wounds he saw dotting his flesh in the kolto tank, then by the overly-considerate Jedi healers who had answered Coriff's every whispered lamentation with kind words and praise.

"_You did a great thing bringing him to us. We're doing all we can. He owes you his life!_"

He wished they would scream at him, instead. That was the wage of failure. What great man let his platoon die? What senior enlisted man was the one who escaped instead of his youngest men, with their lives all ahead of them, or his officer, who he was duty-bound to serve? What stabbed most at Coriff's heart was the sense that he had betrayed his own oaths and severed by death and by cowardice the bonds he had forged with his men in the cruel furnace of battle.

His hands squeezed on the stack of twenty-five envelopes whose drafting over the previous night now left his eyes underlined with bags and his face pallid. If nothing else he was grateful that the medical jargon on the displays evaded his understanding, so that in reading them he could contort those cryptic words with imaginary optimism. He would delude himself as long as he could that the twenty-sixth envelope which sat on his bed on the _Hawk_ would remain unfilled.

"You have to stop coming here, Coriff."

He did not turn, but his vise grip on the envelopes loosened, and the toe of his boot angled to the right, weaning himself off of that vigil of despair. Carth stepped over and placed a hand slowly on his shoulder, not forgetting the things which this man had survived and altogether painfully aware of what he could do when provoked.

"The Council wants to see you again. Bastila's already in the chamber, she…"

Coriff turned to face Carth, and his ghostly pallor now fully visible indicted the pilot with a moment of hesitation. Of acknowledgement.

"She said you two shared a dream. Listen, I know this can't be easy for you, dammit I know _just _how it feels to think you can't protect anyone. I don't…" Carth sighed and shook his head. "I don't remember if I told you about my family."

Coriff blinked.

"Morgana. She was my wife. We had a son named Dustil, and those two…" Carth suddenly turned, and gazed down at the gently wheezing body of Trask Ulgo that clung by withering sinews to a hint of life. "I did it all for them. And when Malak glassed Telos, I felt just like you must feel now."

Coriff worked his jaw for a moment, experimenting as to whether or not he could force out a voice that did not shiver. "Like you're useless," he breathed.

"Yeah… like that," Carth whispered, so intimately and quiet under the cover of medical machinery that even the passing Jedi nurse did not hear. "But then I thought about what Mo and Dustil would've wanted me to do. They would want me to do _everything_ in my power to keep what happened to us from happening to other families."

In an abrupt moment which he could not control, Coriff half-shouted, half-wailed at the walls and the ceiling and at nothing in particular. It was a raw exegesis of his own pain. But he had yelled already – his confessions and self-castigations brooked no great catharsis and had no more impact than to tire him out, when his energy in the throes of recovery and in the newfound promise of Jedi training was suddenly a more precious commodity than ever before.

An orderly looked over with concern until Carth waved him away.

"There's tragedy in our lives. But we can stop tragedy in the lives of others. You and me, we can redeem ourselves. I can keep flying and shooting. And you? Maybe you'll do it as a Jedi."

Carth pulled his friend into a crushing fraternal embrace, one part out of sympathy, one part out of keeping him still, and one part for his own selfish need.

"I'll do it for Trask and your platoon if you promise to do it for Mo and my Dustil…" Carth choked.

For a moment they just stood there, appreciating what one could give the other: an understanding which they felt no-one else in the galaxy could grasp quite like them. But it was the realization that so many others _did_ understand and should have never been forced to understand which drove them to part – their sins quietly confessed and the hidden moment of weakness indulged.

Coriff stood up straight and rolled back his shoulders. "I need you to take these while I meet with the Council," he instructed with bassy confidence. "They should be sent as soon as possible."

Carth took the stack of envelopes in his hand and tucked them preciously into the deep inner pocket of his orange pilot's jacket.

"For the families of the deceased?"

"Pride of the Republic, to a man. Their parents deserve to know that their sons died facing the enemy," Coriff's voice rose like a twisting wind which carried the morning embers of a fire into the trees. "Not one of them hesitated, in the end."

Carth shook his hand firmly, and when Coriff looked into his eyes he felt he could count the number of letters of just the same type that he had written over the years as a wingman to pilots that never returned.

Coriff pressed his jaw and ground his teeth together even as his voice wavered. "If I really will be a Jedi… then maybe I'll be half of one of these men someday."

%%%

%%%

"Bastila has told us of a most unusual development. She claims you and she have shared a dream," Vandar Tokare spoke curiously from his seat at the head of the Council, "a vision of Malak and Revan in the ancient ruins here on Dantooine."

"These ruins have long been known to us, but we believed them to be merely burial mounds. Perhaps they are more than we first suspected, if Revan and Malak found something there," Dorak suggested.

Coriff shifted uncomfortably, as if the gaze of the Council was a judgement of his impropriety for witnessing the cryptic inner drama of the Jedi Order.

"They seemed to be searching for something, Masters…" he bit his lip and willed a more comprehensive response as payment for the right to stand before them – regardless as to who invited who. "Like they were expecting something there. Something they had seen before, or maybe they heard of in the past. They weren't going in blind."

A few of the masters shared surreptitious glances before Vandar spoke next. Coriff felt himself cowed by the level of disrespect which he seemed to inflict. Of course these were the private matters of the Jedi Order – who was an ordinary man to be privy to their intrigue?

"Bastila has described this shared dream to the Council in great detail. We feel it is more than a dream," Vandar rubbed his chin. "We feel it is a vision. The Force is acting through you as it acts through Bastila."

Of course he had been told such things many times before since the _Ebon Hawk_ first arrived on Dantooine, but for it to be stated so plainly left his jaw slack. The _Force_ acted through _him_?

None of this was right.

"I… I'm having visions now? Sometimes I…" Coriff bit his tongue before in his anxiety he could confess the tears he had observed in his own psychological fabric. "This can't be right, Masters," Coriff shook his head slowly. "I'm a soldier. I've sworn an oath to serve the Republic and I will do anything you ask of me. But the Force? I just don't-"

"The Force acts as it will, Coriff Bannick. Whatever _your_ opinions on it do not alter that fact in any way," Vrook chided.

Coriff coughed and looked down. "Then please forgive my impudence, Master Vrook."

Masters Zhar and Vandar both looked over at Vrook with a tempering evaluation. The Twi'lek master placed his hand over his heart and continued in a more genial tone.

"You and Bastila share a powerful connection to the Force… and each other. This is not unheard of. Connections often form between Master and student, but rarely does a bond develop so quickly," Zhar said.

"Whatever dangers may lie ahead, we cannot ignore the destiny that has brought you and Bastila here to us. Together," finished Master Vandar.

Coriff sputtered. "Are you saying I'm… joined with her? Just because I found her on Taris, or…" he plied the sea of his confusion for any way to articulate its sheer incredulous depth. "Why didn't the Jedi find me when I was young? Why now? Why is the Force acting through _me_? Through _us_?" The commando pointed between himself and Bastila.

"You have nothing to fear from this, Gunnery Sergeant," Vandar spoke coolly. "You and she are linked, as is your fate to hers. And for whatever confluence of events, be they random or by the intent of the Force, this is the situation we have no option but to confront."

Master Vandar tucked his hands in the opposite sleeves of his robe, closing his eyes in the quiet consideration that might be typical of any ancient sage. His eyes lowered, and then suddenly raised again with a kind of remote smile, that one should only trust his experience even if they could not know for themselves. Coriff was bewitched by that aged, venerable assurance and felt the creeping heat of embarrassment scale his neck at having ever doubted.

"Together, you two may be able to stop Darth Malak and the Sith," Vandar stated resolutely. "This we have all concluded."

"But do not let your head be filled with visions of glory and power! Such thoughts are the path to the dark side. The way of the light is long and difficult, as you must learn. Are you ready for such hardship?" Master Vrook threatened.

What else could be said? Coriff played over the options in his head and counted none other than to keep moving. Work. Like had always been the right path.

"Of course Masters. I accept this mission and your training."

"The Force flows through you like no student we have ever seen. But you are willful and headstrong… a dangerous combination," Vrook warned.

"Before we send you to investigate the ruins which appeared in your dream, you must be trained in the ways of the Jedi so that you can resist the darkness within yourself… within all of us. Otherwise you are doomed to fail," said Vandar.

Master Zhar clapped his hands impatiently. "Then we must begin your training at once! You have a destiny upon you that you must be prepared to face. The entire fate of the galaxy is upon you."

"I can only hope you will prove up to the task."

Upon Master Vrook's cautioning words the meeting was dispersed, and Coriff released for the day so that he might begin training the following morning.

He was numb when he returned to the ship that day.

When he practiced his combatives and grappling with Canderous, he was still numb.

The taste of food in the Jedi Enclave feeding hall was bland on his tongue and only reminded him of the insignificance of his own life, small, seated at one table staring down at a tray when the entire Republic now sat on his shoulders.

Only with the aid of medicine did he sleep that night, a mind too obsessed with thoughts of failure and sloped shoulders to drift away on its own accord.

%%%

%%%

Coriff, Carth, and Canderous had no special joke or pun that played off of the alliteration of their names, focused as they were on their training. Only when the sun breached over the horizon and the first brith took to the air flapping their purple-trimmed fin-like wings as they emerged from their cliffside hollows was it obvious how long the three of them had been out.

Coriff relished the violent beat of his heart against his chest. It was the first sensation to which he wasn't benumbed since the scale of his fate had been revealed to him by the Jedi Council just yesterday. At the ten mile mark, him and Canderous had to cajole Carth into finishing out their fifteen-mile path with them using a mixture of material incentives – namely, giving him the Arkanian blaster which they bartered off of an enclave merchant – and by countering his complaints of being "too old for this jarhead gun-humper cardio bullshit" by pointing out Canderous' advantage in age over everyone else on the crew.

When they returned to the grounds of the enclave the Jedi seemed already in full motion: the promise of a scrumptious organic breakfast wafted out of the kitchens, students and teachers sat cross-legged all over the grounds and in the gardens and underneath trees for their morning meditation, and the distant cracks of training lightsabers provided the ambient backing to it all. None of the three men were too proud to admit that after a good washing up they would have no problem devouring whatever that day's cooking shift put in front of them.

One humble cot centered his entire room. A single footlocker at its foot and a cluster of plasteel cylinders in the corner was everything else. Coriff wiped down his face one last time with his sleeping shirt and then stopped.

Over his tussled sheets was a square formation of four stacks of folded clothes and a box. One stack had a pair of simple brown robes and pants, two others had undergarments – tabards, obi, under tunics, underwear, the like - and the fourth was a plain stack of silver exercise shirts and black shorts. In the box were two pairs of standard Jedi boots.

Coriff's balled up workout shirt unfurled on the floor and left a trace of sweat around it – only a fraction of the density it had accumulated from the morning run. On the left breast was a small, simplified version of the Republic Naval Infantry insignia crossed with two red arrows behind to transform it into the symbol of the Naval Commando branch. In blocky aurebesh underneath the emblem was written "MINIMUM GLORY" in the first line and "MAXIMUM DETERMINATION" in the second line stacked tightly beneath it.

The text was fading and the emblem washing out from frequent wear. It was one of the four training shirts issued to him on Carida, and the only original still with him after he'd lost the other three and had them replaced when a container full of trainees' bags was lost on Anaxes during the NCO course. Coriff wondered if he would ever wear it again after this day.

There were no part timers in the Jedi Order – and he'd never seen Bastila or any other Jedi for that matter outside of their assigned garb save the customized individual robe that each member was permitted. He looked at those neatly-folded, unlabeled, unadorned silver shirts and acknowledged them with a short nod: they would be his new gear for what would most likely be the rest of his life, and for whatever innocuous reason that simple moment demarcated to Coriff the totality of the shift in his identity.

He was a Jedi now. Or at least, he was going to be.

But even if he wasn't on Commando Team 4 or teaching at the Commando Instructor School, assigned to a ship or a planetside billet, deployed on a mission or banished to an administrative desk-jockey purgatory, he took comfort in the things that would never leave him.

"Are you ready to begin?" Bastila asked. She averted her eyes once she realized his state of undress.

"I am, I am…" Coriff drawled, pulling an undershirt over his head before fumbling with the tunics and tabard. "Just thinking about some things."

"Good," Bastila sighed. "I picked these out according to your sizes. If anything doesn't fit, I'll make sure to get you another one."

Coriff looked back at her and smiled. "I appreciate it."

After his trousers came on he spent a few moments crisscrossing his hands in confusion over the arrangement of the under and outer tunic, let alone the tabard and obi which would come next.

"Mind helping me out with this?"

"O-of course, Coriff," Bastila hesitated.

While her sure hands guided his, he looked once again at the silver shirts, wondering if the identity which they represented could ever truly be his, or if else they would only be a costume.

%%%

%%%

_Devaron's two moons reflected the wan light of their dying star over the wave caps. Those silver pock-marked disks scarcely illuminated the sea in front of them as the inflatable rubber boat punched over the rolling waves. Its dual engines hummed under the crashing sound of gunfire from the flat-bottomed coastal monitors running up and down the shallows, pounding away at the Sith positions with their oversized guns._

_As the boat pilot took them closer to shore, they slowed down as they passed between two of the Devaronian warships skirting the mouth of the river just outside the range of the Sith man-portable anti-tank weapons. Suddenly one of them shifted course, and the boat pilot poured on speed to evade the cutting advance of its sharpened bow._

"_Hey! Hey! You fucking lunatics! Are you trying to kill us!?" Sergeant Troond screamed as if the crew of the Devaronian coastal monitor could hear him up in the pilot house a hundred feet above over the rhythmic blasting of naval artillery._

_Troond took a deep breath and lowered his head, resting his chin back down on the bulbous inflated edge of the rubber boat. Beneath the wetsuit and hybrid goggles, only his nose was visible, yet even this wrinkled in embarrassment and snorted away the splash of salty estuary water._

"_I shouldn't be angry… it isn't Her will," he muttered._

_Coriff ran an idle hand along his back, feeling for the comfort of weaponry. It was unusual armament for an unusual mission. A long sword was stitched into the back of his wetsuit for easy storage, accompanied only by an overcharged RAMICO S10 blaster pistol in a waterproof holster at his waist._

_But with that sword alone he felt more powerful than if he had a whole platoon's worth of heavy repeaters; a ninety-five percent cortosis alloy cored with phrikite – a material only just discovered in the last war – made for a fearsome and extraordinarily rare weapon, something not even the Sith could match. Strapped to his arm was a single-use energy shield for closing the gap only if absolutely necessary – the same issued to the other three members of his team._

_Staff Sergeant Bannick visually inspected the rest of Besh Squad – his squad. Troond had the broken-down CD-4 mass-driver rifle and an S10 of his own, while Vizvaal and Otaron each packed a single PAB80 personal defense carbine._

_The latter two would infiltrate the camp amidst the chaos of bombardment and steal the plans for the Sith defense on the Kunjak Plain. At the same time, Troond and Coriff would set up an overwatch position at the camp and wait for their target of opportunity – a Sith apprentice gifted in the military arts who Malak had personally appointed as a theater-level army officer in her jealous master's stead._

_The wailing of the coastal bombardment which began shortly after the gunship dropped their rubber boat a few miles away from the mouth of the twin rivers told Coriff and his team that the plan was well in motion: the Devaronian Central Army Group – or CENTAG – had already begun its diversionary attack. The 9__th__ Air and Land Division would come within half a mile of the Sith forward headquarters, and in the morning it would suddenly lose heart and break into a retreat up the coast until it reached the safety of Fort Quarra. And then, as if by magic, the sixty or so Sith divisions on the Kunjak Plain would find themselves leaderless and unable to hold back the tide of the re-energized CENTAG advance. They would recover the largest anti-orbital gun battery on the planet, drive off the wounded Sith fleet in orbit, and once again keep the Devaron salient out of Malak's hands and a thorn in his side._

_Troond said a quiet prayer for their victory and safety as he always did before missions._

"_Oh Mother, oh Loving and Merciful, we ask that you sanctify our mission to help save innocent lives and defend our Republic, oh Mother, bless it and cleanse it in your name, Warm Goddess, so that you may protect Coriff, Ko-hak, and Rinar and keep them from harm today. We ask for this humbly."_

"_We ask humbly," the other three men whispered under their breath. Testifying with Troond's prayers wasn't necessarily a religious thing – it was a straightforward matter that just as many planets had their own religion as did no religion, or some basic observation of the Force – but a group ceremony that they could share and that nobody could take away, in those moments of harmony before the cataclysm of battle._

_Whether or not there was a Warm Goddess had nothing to do with it – they were brothers, and their brother's words to the beyond never failed to bring solace._

_Soon the lapping waves on the coast came into view, and the fires in the Sith camp rose from beyond the trees far into the sky. The boat pilot turned sharply to the left, and Coriff and Troond on the right side of the boat tucked in their arms._

"_Team One, go!"_

_Two commandos rolled off of the side and ducked beneath the waves. Their arms muscled over in iron and reinforced with single-minded devotion pushed them through the water just as much as their powerful legs and sleek fins kicking behind them._

"The path you have chosen to walk is difficult. Intensive training will prepare you physically for the demands of the Order."

Coriff went down to one knee, sweat pouring down his face and staining every inch of his clothes. His raspy breaths pressed his torso up and down from the sheer force of his lungs straining ever-more for air. But the training sword in his right hand never wavered from his grip, and his eyes were cast down at the floor only briefly before they shot up at his opponent.

Bastila reached down with a sportsmanlike hand, to which Coriff took the entire forearm and hooked himself back up with a hard grunt and a toothy grin.

"Thanks."

The bruises on his body and the staunched cuts that decorated his face suggested that anyone in his shoes should be bowed out, sitting down, recovering, _anything_ except taking a double load of combat classes!

Bastila hadn't believed her ears when Torush sitting beside her at lunch casually remarked that he enjoyed sparring with Coriff that morning. That _morning_! There was a morning class of four hours and an afternoon class of the same length – these were not arranged for Jedi students to double up, but to keep them from missing out on other opportunities if their master wanted them to hold trainings or send them to classes at different times of day. Four hours was more than enough time to get in all the necessary training and exhaust oneself.

Yet Coriff drew himself into a fighting stance again in his seventh hour of training that day – it was a basic style, his arms holding the sword parallel in front of him at about chest height – but the remarkable thing was in his eyes.

Those eyes raked each one of his opponents, from their footwork to their grip, the way their body shifted and turned and stepped into each strike. His whole face lit up when somebody hit him, and the Cheshire joy he displayed when having the ever-loving snot beaten out of him was unsettling to more than a few of his sparring partners – Bastila knew, since every single one of them felt the need to tell her about it.

He was a learner, and the rare kind of learner whose pride wasn't hurt when his cup of knowledge had to be dumped and refilled by someone else. It made him dangerous, for anyone that sparred with him for too long found in him someone that quickly began mirroring their movements, and in short time _improving_ on them, combining technical perfection with a dizzying arsenal of techniques that _Force knows_ he must have picked up on his missions halfway across the galaxy and back. Blademaster Firrhat had watched him fight a couple of bouts, and scratching his silvering Bothan chin hairs concluded that he must have been a Zabrak in a past life. Firrhat recognized many of the intricacies of different sword styles, which was in all honesty a rare trait in many Jedi – obviously this Coriff Bannick had learned sword fighting under the RSS, or Republic Standard System of martial arts, but it was obvious those skills had also cross-pollinated with alien influences, namely those from Iridonia and her colonies.

So Coriff attacked again, and although Bastila easily parried the initial barrage, her often spell-binding sweeping counterattack failed to dislodge him from a forward position. She parried a probing strike, and pushed in again from the side – which moments ago had sent him careening into the floor after the grip of her sword whipped him cleanly in the jaw.

But when she struck, Coriff was simply no longer there.

He'd seen the twitch in her arms and heard the shuffle of boots screaming loud and clear what Bastila was about to do to him, and so he slipped out of the way with such impudent disregard that any non-Jedi would have snarled.

In fact, Bastila herself might have been mad too if she hadn't stepped in and feinted him out of his guard, pulling him into a trap that allowed her to trip him up and send him face-down on the training mat with a loud thud.

And what was in Bastila's eyes when he rolled onto his back and grinned, kicking up to his feet in a single fluid motion, was recognition.

%%%

%%%

_Vizvaal and Otaron were already deep inside the camp. Nestled in the crook of two trees upon a bed of roots and bushes Coriff and Troond cursed their luck – and their visibility. The bright lights in the burning half of the camp only served to further black out the other half of the camp by contrast, and the wind-swayed foliage that wrapped around it periodically blocked their view completely._

_Troond had the commander's tent dialed in perfectly, and he knew he could land any planned shot blindfolded, so the intervention of the plants had only brought mild frustration. Coriff, in the observer's position, was not so peaceful. He whisked his fingers ceaselessly over the focus dials of his binocular NVGs, searching for their target in the mass of sentient chaos._

_He cursed again when he saw two Sith soldiers take up sentry positions at the edge of the camp, facing them directly albeit entirely unaware of the sniper team scarcely three hundred feet away. Behind them a mob of prisoners had been assembled as meat shields for shrapnel, or maybe just to keep them in one place so they wouldn't escape in the chaos. Coriff might have expected both of those rationales from the Sith._

_That was when she emerged._

_Black robes flowing behind her and the neck gaiter pulled down from her face, Iyassa Yoluren stomped out of her tent with two red-armored shock troopers for security. Through Troond's scope and Coriff's goggles the two of them observed her mouth chattering with the shouts of command. Every Sith officer that ran by was stopped and given new tasking – it seemed the chaos of the naval bombardment and the Ninth Division's advance was getting the better of their discipline, if only for a moment._

"_Sentries. Three-hundred and one…" Troond saw the down-angle displayed in his scope on a counter, and calculated the cosine in his head to get the true distance. "Guy on the left first. Wait one…" Coriff instructed, observing the rustle of leaves both near and far._

…_and got what he was looking for. The tiniest lull in the rage of the storm. In the scantest of moments, the sashaying of the trees and bushes was interrupted._

"_Zero wind. Fire!"_

_The faint crack of Troond's CD-4 reported twice – the first 7.5mm supersonic round shattered the faceplate of the leftmost sentry, who had been standing a little behind and a little abreast of his comrade. By the time his friend noticed and turned around, Troond had already cycled the action and let out the next shot. That one ripped into the plasteel cowl on the side of his helmet, effortlessly passing into the skull. Both sentries rag dolled into the ditch._

_There was no way she could've heard them._

_No way she could've seen them._

_But through his goggles Coriff made eye contact with the Dark Jedi Iyassa almost three hundred feet away._

_Troond and Coriff were as still as statues._

"_Come on… you don't see us… you don't see us…"_

_After the mission, Coriff told Troond that he felt the Warm Goddess smiling down when Iyassa looked away. But it would only be years later that he understood the power working through him that night._

"_Alright. Wait one…" he whispered._

"Meditation will teach you to channel the power of the Force. To truly understand the way of the Jedi, you must open your mind to knowledge. Seek wisdom in the teachings of the great masters of our Order."

Out of the corner of his eye Coriff watched the other children hovering like repulsorchairs steadily over the ground. Only the younger ones occasionally shifted above the fixed point on the ground they had selected, re-adjusting and returning seconds later. Some waffled in place through the strain and levitated small objects around them, like pillows and leaves.

Coriff poured all of his will through the top of his skull – cross-legged, he pulled all that he could together to force the datapad lying in front of him to take flight.

All he got for his trouble was a headache.

When the Force manipulation class concluded, Coriff slinked away into the libraries to get to the bottom of his struggle. This was something that _children_ could do. Granted, they were special children with years of experience, but they would sit themselves down and in a few moments hover around like ancient mages with household objects contorting in space to their will.

And ever since beginning his training, not once did Coriff feel the Force really flow through him. His mind was clear, he could keep up with Jedi sword fighting and match their pace in a fight, but what good would that do? He would spend a whole afternoon focusing all his cerebral desires on the tiniest dot-like mote of existence and _will _it to move, catch on fire, _anything_.

When others had lush rivers of the Force springing out of their hearts, Coriff felt as though he had a dried-up desert river with only a few spongy patches of moist dirt.

Supposedly the wisdom of Master Nomi Sunrider would lift him out of the pit of ignorance in which he paced back and forth. But Zhar's recommended literature was nothing if not overly elaborate. Coriff was in awe of Sunrider's wisdom, of that there was no question. Her eager diatribes on the nature of the Force spanned hundreds of pages and she elucidated upon every manner – large and small – with so much perfectly technical language that she must have coined a few terms just in the process of writing down her lived experiences.

But all those words melted together and for every high-minded concept or analogy of the Force that Coriff force-fed his brain, the dumber and no less lost he felt for his absolutely novice command of what the masters told him was a galaxy-saving power. Maybe if he confronted Malak he could throw a small pebble at his eye and blind him long enough to stick a grenade on his belt.

When Coriff awoke the next morning, his mouth dry and tangy and neck sore from hunching over the library desk all night, he found himself with _two_ datapads. The first, naturally, was Sunrider's collection of tomes with appropriately esoteric commentary pinned on by every Jedi philosopher with their own big words to add, as if any edition of the text without their minutely different wording carried in the margins might lead the reader to the dark side!

But the second was a small, flat datapad with a durasheet note taped to the screen,

_Master Thon has written on these problems._

_His words helped me when I struggled like you do now._

_-Bastila_

So after a short break to clean up and eat, Coriff dove into this new work presented with him, already distracted by the thought that someone as powerful as Bastila Shan might have grappled with her command of the Force in the same way he did. Strangely, it encouraged him to keep pushing on, for if someone could start in his place and rise to the level of power which Bastila so casually enjoyed, well, anything was possible.

Thon wrote of tension. Not of a singular intent to act with the Force, but a recognition of the spaces in between, the gaps, and the potential energy between two wills, two opposites, or two spaces. Some thirty pages into this primer Coriff enjoyed the birth of a wellspring of understanding deep in his chest. Without casting a single power or lifting a finger to raise something he knew innately what it would feel like.

Coriff felt things and people around him, like vibrations without a medium, heat without a source. Every single one of them was _different_ and between those spaces was so much potential…

From the other side of the library, studying a text on the Republic Navy, Bastila did not notice herself smiling when she peered over the edge of her datapad at the sight of Coriff lost in Master Thon's text.

She went back to her reading, wondering when Coriff would notice the thirty-odd chairs and datapads hovering around him.

%%%

%%%

"_Shoot! Shoot god damn it! Cover me!" Coriff screamed as the blaster fire from the crimson-armored shock troopers ripped into their position. They whipped up spires of dirt and tore off chunks of bark and clumps of leaf litter. _

_Troond shimmied back on his stomach deeper into cover, nestling himself between the web of raised dirt and thick Devaronian oak roots._

_Seconds later he was returning fire, sending shots overhead of Coriff sprinting through the gully, sword drawn, held tightly at the hip. A faint blue glow crawled over the surface of his jet-black wetsuit, the membrane sparking and screeching when a stray shot hit him in the chest._

_Coriff pressed on at full speed, in his dead sprint covering the roughly hundred yard gap in twelve eternal seconds. Adrenaline pushed him beyond his limits. Shouting and blasterfire filled the air, and the festering smoke of the burning camp threatened to strangle him._

_Iyassa's two guards collapsed for two expert shots let out of Troond's rifle. The prisoners scattered in every direction trying to flee, while a few enterprising – and ill-advised – Republic Army captives rushed the Sith in an attempt to bring her down with overwhelming numbers. From up in the nest Troond growled and bit his tongue out of frustration. These heroes were blocking his shots and getting themselves killed._

_Coriff sprinted into the clearing when the sixth brave prisoner fell dead on the ground, his muscles reacting post-mortem to the leftover jolts of electricity coursing through the flesh._

_Iyassa looked up, ready to take the life of a seventh, her red saber upraised and thirsty for blood._

_And she would have slaked it had Coriff not raised his own gleaming steel blade in opposition. Her strike fell upon his guard mere inches from his head. Coriff strained to resist the force of her attack with all of his adrenaline-infused might, reinforced as she was by otherworldly Sith power._

_Iyassa did not notice her blade shiver and crackle with first contact, and so brought her blade back for another strike, this time swinging at the waist in a violent demonstration of the rage of Form VII, Juuyo. Her fury manifested in this first swing of what would have been an unstoppable barrage._

_That is, until her blade flickered and died upon second contact with the 95% cortosis alloy._

_The same dumbfounded look she wore upon that realization was the one she wore at death when Coriff pivoted in the blink of an eye and sank his blade through her chest down to the hilt. _

_His clenched fists and cross guard met the black fabric of her robe, and that was when he knew to withdraw. He simultaneously yanked the blade back and posted her away with a stiff-arm, letting her slide helplessly off the full length of the sword._

_She was still sputtering in shock when Coriff insured the job. Two shots from his S10 barked into the skull and caved it to his satisfaction._

_A platoon of shock troops from Iyassa's guard battalion arrived less than a minute later – they found nothing but a pile of dead prisoners._

"A Jedi is never alone – others in the Order will always stand by you. You and Bastila share a special bond. Do not be afraid to turn to her when you need help in your training."

One, left, right, and a… parry? No, that was the wrong form.

Coriff tried again. His next attempt was no less ridiculous. The basics of Form I, Shii-Cho, were the most fundamental skills that any Jedi would learn. Although Jedi specialized in all manner of saber fighting styles, and not all of them chose to pursue Shii-Cho in the long term, it was the mortar that held all the higher skills together. All other things left aside, a Jedi could rely on their basics as a building block for more complex styles, or as a way forward in and of itself.

Learning Shii-Cho and the basics of lightsaber combat was nothing like training with a regular sword. Although the movements would someday be the same, an apprentice had no business thinking about a saber duel – even with training blades – until the basic drills and forms were mastered. The lightsaber was a special weapon: not only extremely dangerous to use, but difficult to handle on account of its strange handle and weight distribution – how burning-hot energy flowed instead of the cold steel of a blade, and how it was a living, breathing thing in its own right. Any Order blademaster could write a book or two on the succession of emotions felt during a proper lightsaber duel and the relationship one could have with one's own blade. Choice of focusing crystals let it breathe differently, _behave_ differently, and the subtle changes in the saber's form had an extraordinarily diverse impact on the way fights could manifest.

Remnants of the morning rain dripped from the gentle sloping eaves of the inner courtyard. A single ancient blba tree hunched over the yard like an old crone, its arms dangling a hundred smaller branches and waxy leaves like hanging chimes.

A gentle gust of wind caused them to scratch upon one another and rustle. The air was sweet with the rich meat and vegetable stew dinner almost ready in the food hall. Coriff turned his left foot ever so slightly, taking a deep breath in…

Bastila grabbed his arm and pulled the elbow closer to his chest. She kicked his back foot in, tighter, tighter, until _yes_ the perfect stance had been achieved. Even as her own training saber grew sore in her hand she smiled with satisfaction at the progression of Coriff's stance.

"Now, the fifteenth form again. I think we have it this time," she encouraged.

And they stepped together, one, two, a left and a right, block, parry…

…and a progression of violent swings humming through the air, the after-light of their blue blades fading out of sight each moment later. One, two, three, four, five strikes, back! Then charging forward, two more strikes, the retreat…

Bastila watched Coriff's right foot step deftly away, pulling him around to the side while his left foot glided over the cobblestone path like water. His right boot settled in a shallow puddle which splashed when the heel shot down to the floor at the tight snap back to the original stance.

A flawless turn, and a perfect form.

Coriff noticed the beauty in the puddle; the displaced water spread in thin rivers to the divots between adjacent stones. It was the water from that morning, the same which pooled in the garden beside the flowers and shrubs and delicate herbs who thrived under their loving Jedi botanists.

He saw the beauty when his saber cut through the air exactly how it intended to, in the form and style which he and the blade commiserated upon and equally consented to upon each step of the form.

He saw beauty in the ancient blba tree, whose unbelievably soft bark massaged any hand which stroked it. Its waxy leaves that withered away and corked off of the branch when the cold arrived, and returned in all their glory once the sunny season came again. How it observed thousands of Jedi over the centuries practicing the exact same forms. And how it was his witness now, too.

Coriff looked to his left and saw beauty in the determination and honed skill of his partner. Her proud shoulders and the managed pace which she took on any challenge. All the weight of the Republic on her shoulders, and the grace with which she bore it.

The beauty in her face and the eyes burning with passion. Soft brown hair and two pigtails that framed her physiognomy.

Beauty that the Jedi Order might have not preferred him to notice, which he supposed upon returning the extinguished saber to his belt.

%%%

%%%

_Vizvaal and Otaron popped up from the lip of the blast crater, letting off another fierce volley at their pursuers. Three more foolhardy Sith dropped dead, and the rest took cover behind their armored vehicles once again._

"_We're two out! Just hold on! Do you still have the plans?" The pilot shouted over the radio over the incessant pounding of the flak._

"_We've got it all! Just get down here before we're overrun!" Coriff yelled._

_He crawled forward and leaned over the fallen log, squinting down the iron sights of his S10, the luminescent paint on the forward sight framing a Sith heavy weapons operator who had grown too complacent while setting up his lascannon._

_Coriff squeezed down on the trigger and down the man went. He looked over at the river, where the body of the Sith commander was surely already floating out to sea. Up above he saw the wing lights of a Republic Army UG-8 Dauntless gunship descending rapidly over the water. It pitched up and turned around, ready to open its rear hatch door down on the river bank._

_An anti-air missile screamed out of the Sith position, likely fired by one of the armored vehicles parked there for cover. The gunship popped flares and dove to the right, narrowly evading that shot until a second missile flew in from the opposite direction and exploded right at the joint of the left wing with the airframe._

_The wing snapped off and the gunship tumbled impotently onto its side, swinging hard to the left and half-spinning into the trees._

_Coriff cursed into the tacnet._

"_Get us an alternative exfil right fucking now! I'm going for the pilot!"_

_He sprinted out of cover, bee lining for the crash site._

"The way of the Jedi is difficult. It requires great discipline. Yet even though you are a mere apprentice, your potential is unlimited – and your progress amazing."

Coriff rolled underneath the blue saber and pivoted to the left, just outside the range of the follow-up stab. He leaned back, and then straight back in after he baited his opponent into over-extending. But instead of a faux-decapitation, he slammed the opposing blade out of the way with his own and met his opponent with a harsh knee to the ribs – not enough to cause an injury, but enough to knock someone over.

Now all three padawans writhed on the ground – senior to Coriff in rank but certainly not age, and it appeared they no longer had the advantage in skill, either.

At his second class of the day and the sixth hour of blade training Coriff had an unmarked face and the credit of not one burn or scrape on his training robe. Not even the obi tied ornately around his waist showed any sign of disturbance.

"Thank you for the opportunity to learn," Coriff repeated three times, as he helped each padawan off the ground and bowed to them.

Bastila watched with a certain degree of pride. Of course there had been a time where she felt indignant at the recognition of his raw talent, but such was the natural way of things. It was a raw, sentient emotion and as a Jedi she suppressed it. Now in the teaching role she felt supremely satisfied that her instruction bred results. After all, Coriff was _basically_ her own student. Master Zhar spent time with him in the classroom and in meditation, but for a net count of hours in the day spent learning Bastila had at least twice that number with Coriff than anyone else at the enclave could boast.

She pressed the ice pack against her face and wrapped another arm around her still-sore stomach. She was proud, but that pride was starting to hurt a little…

%%%

%%%

_Coriff stood in the open waving the IR strobe at the end of the duracord. Command had tipped them off that a Devaronian special operations boat team was in the area and that they were double-timing to their position to make an extract. It was a pair of gunboats, the kind well stacked for riverine combat operations, and as such one person was required to stand more or less entirely exposed while spinning a flashing infrared light to identify their position and guide friendly fire away._

_The gunship pilot was still passed out in the trench. His helmet took the worst of the landing and cracked in two, but the guy was a hardy Corellian and looked to be completely alright other than a few scratches and a bloody nose. Otaron and Vizvaal had almost drained their powerpacks, while Troond was cleanly out of ammunition and had switched to using a Sith A-38C he pilfered from a nearby corpse._

_A pair of Sith troopers came up from the riverbank intending to flank their position. IR strobe still spinning, Coriff took his S10 in his free hand and let off every shot he could until the powerpack's overheat alarm started beeping. Both Sith were down, but when he flipped over the blaster pistol to inspect the powerpack he found it was well and truly dead. He tucked it back into his waist, scanning the ground for another weapon but unwilling to abandon his post waving the strobe._

_Shots continued to pass around him, slapping the dirt and whizzing around his ears. He stood beside a thick tree for cover, but it only protected him from fire at particular angles. He still felt the cold brush of death every couple of seconds when a shot threatened to reach home._

_Another squad came up from the riverbank._

_Coriff lifted his free hand over his back and fingered the grip of his sword._

_If he could just close the distance… if he could just keep going after being shot…_

"_We see you! Take cover!"_

"_Hit the deck!"_

_Four dual laser cannons and a pair of repeating blasters ripped into the tree line. Coriff remained standing, marking the friendly position while the Devaronian swift boats did evasive circles in the widest part of the river. Their deck guns unleashed a continuous spray of high-powered blasterfire that showed no sign of stopping._

_A few of the Sith vehicles exploded, and the spray of blasterfire cut like a saw as it advanced methodically through the tree line from firing position to firing position. In a matter of seconds the entire Sith pursuit team had fallen apart; the dead and the dying remained where they were, and those still living had more than enough sense to scramble deeper into the woods and dive into the first cover they could find._

"_Go! Go! Besh Squad, we're getting out of here!"_

_Coriff ran back to the crater where he saw his men already withdrawing to the boats. He breathed a sigh of relief, half of him not believing the mission was finally going to be over. He lifted the unconscious gunship pilot over his shoulders and double-timed it to the boats._

_One of them continued peppering the Sith with fire while the other had pulled up to the riverbank. Its gangplank slammed down on the dirt. A Devaronian operator whose two horns poked out of his tactical helmet stood at the edge of the boat waving for the team to come aboard, sending pot-shots downrange with his blaster rifle._

"_Come on! Let's get you guys out of here!"_

_The boat engines roared and they were headed back to the bombardment squadron at flank speed before the Sith even realized what hit them._

"In all my years I have never seen one who has mastered the initial training so quickly. You have done in weeks what many cannot do in years. I am honored to welcome you fully into the Jedi Order."

Coriff maintained a rocksteady visage and stared straight ahead when Zhar conducted the ceremonial tying of his obi and belt, the act which formally recognized apprentice as a fully matriculated Padawan Coriff Bannick in the eyes of his master.

"I have only congratulations for you, Padawan Coriff. Soon you will build your own lightsaber, and set off with Bastila to explore the ruins on Dantooine which you both dreamed of not so long ago. And from there, then… perhaps we shall begin to unravel a weakness in Malak's Sith machine."

So many times before, Coriff had fought the impulse to salute higher ranking Jedi as had been customary in so many academy settings before, on Coruscant and Carida and Anaxes. But now it felt natural to simply bow out of respect to a master.

He was a Jedi.

He was a Jedi, and he was going to redeem himself. Coriff and the crew of the _Ebon Hawk_ were going to save the galaxy or die trying.

%%%

%%%

_The swift boats stormed away from the coast, leaping over the chop as the sun poked lazily above the horizon. Coriff looked back at the bombardment squadron. He'd not seen any detail in them during the night, but now at daybreak they appeared so much less imposing._

_Or he supposed it might have been the distance. Anything would be more intimidating had one sat underneath it in a rubber boat in the dead of night._

"_That was some great shooting tonight Troond. You should be teaching at sniper school."_

_Coriff sighed and cracked his knuckles, content to lean back against the metal hull and catch a few minutes of sleep before the inevitable debrief upon their return._

_He opened one eye._

"_Troond?"_

_He looked around._

_And then in a panic. Not another soul was on the boat, not even the Devaronian crew. The wheel in the pilot stand manipulated itself as if a phantom were its operator, and the second boat was suddenly nowhere to be seen._

_Coriff shot up to his feet and pulled his goggles back over his eyes, switching to the true light binocular setting._

"_Hello?" He wavered, heart sinking._

_He saw back on the shoreline, framed in the foreground of the burning Sith camp and unfolding battle in the forests his entire unit._

_Besh Squad, Gundark Platoon, everyone from every squad, and Lieutenant Azut, all lined up on the rocks._

_Stone-still, every single one of them staring at him._

"_I… I didn't leave you…" Coriff bleated._

_The crew of the _Endar Spire_ lined up to a man. Everyone from the navigation department to the combat systems section. The captain, the executive officer, and some of the Jedi who had come aboard, too._

_All of them, standing on the rocks and the furthest spits of sand, only so far that the waves curled and lapped at their toes and went no further._

_On the furthest spit was Trask Ulgo. At first in filthy hospital scrubs, but when Coriff blinked, he was dressed in the standard red and gold naval working uniform. _

"_I didn't leave you!" Coriff yelled._

_All they did was look back at him, silently._

"_I- I can make this right!" Coriff wailed, grabbing at the self-directing wheel of the boat and straining against the invisible force which refused it to change direction._

"_I promise! I can make everything right!" Coriff screamed even louder, tearing his muscles apart on the wheel until it snapped clear off of the pilot stand._

Bastila bit her tongue. There was no proper response.

She looked despairingly at the far wall that separated her room from Coriff's, feeling through it all of the pain and chaos which spread like pelagic waves across their Force bond.

"_No! I'm sorry! Please!_" He yelled once again in his sleep, its volume carrying through the wooden walls.

This was quickly becoming her least favorite thing. Not for losing rest, as that was something easily remedied by meditation and earplugs. It was pain she could shut herself off to.

But pain she _refused_ to shut herself off to.

Bastila had lost count by now of how many times Coriff experienced that dream and shared it with her unconsciously since arriving on Dantooine. Every time he raged against fate, the boat took him further away from the shore, until at the absolute furthest distance he could still see, the masked man executed those men and women with his lightsaber.

But the dream had always ended before Trask died. It always had.

Until tonight.

Padawan Bastila Shan rolled over, screwing her eyes shut as she felt one more life pass into the Force on the other side of the enclave, having wheezed its last, pathetic breath into a respirator.


	7. Alderaan

Coriff was in a bad mood. But relief was the feeling of sliding one arm into the dress jacket followed by the other. Severely less comfortable than a set of Jedi robes but proper nonetheless. Coriff pushed the gold buttons through their holes with his rough fingers all the way to the top, concealing all but the crisp flash of the white dress shirt at the neck and the black silk tie which descended from it.

Two rows of medals over his left breast were topped with his warfare device – a silver pin of the Republic's emblem with detail of two blasters and a sword crossing beneath it. Wings and flowering branches extended to the right and left, and two arrows pointing up crossed behind the Republic emblem itself.

The most senior award in his medal rack was the Distinguished Medal of Valor, with its gold, white gold, and blue inlay displaying one simple star. This had been won on Devaron, and the standard Medal of Valor which followed it in the procession had been won only weeks prior in orbit around Allanteen during a raid on a Sith prison station. Every platoon from Commando Team 4 and even a supporting battalion from the regular Republic Naval Infantry had been part of that action.

Coriff looked in the mirror of the _Ebon Hawk_'s refresher and tugged at the hem of his jacket, straightening it out and re-aligning the medal rack. Next was a Knight's Gold Crescent – awarded twice over as indicated by the extravagant amethyst trim – and two examples of the Gold Crescent with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds, which was of peculiar status in the Republic that any repeat awards were worn with that number of identical medals, instead of merely upgrading its appearance or adding a marker.

The other three medals were less conspicuous varieties of the Republic's awards for military heroism, filling out the regulation length rack of eight medals quite nicely. For all his newfound Jedi discipline and humility there was no fighting the spell of pride that encouraged him to roll his neck and straighten his back in the mirror that all eight most senior decorations had been earned in the line of fire – a good conduct and marksmanship medal picked up on Corulag just didn't carry the same weight.

With his shoes properly shined, pants spotless, jacket in order, and uniform combination cover sat at the perfect regulation angle atop his head, Coriff exited the refresher, and was instantly reminded of his bad mood.

Bastila stood in the middle of the passageway with arms crossed exactly as he'd remembered when Coriff ducked into the refresher in the first place. Blasting his own patriotic music at high volume off a datapad and perfecting his appearance had almost enough to cool off boiling blood.

Almost.

"Get out of my way, Bastila," he ordered low and clearly.

"You are _wasting_ our time," she spat in return, pointing a chiding finger as if she really was his master, and he really was an impetuous little padawan. "We made the delivery. You got your deal. Now can we _please_ get on with this mission that, oh, _you know_, the whole fate of the Republic rests on?"

Coriff simply forced his way past her with a callous right shoulder. She whipped around and snatched his arm in a crushing grip. His dress shoes clipped on the deck and squeaked when he turned around, staring down at her hand which gripped his sleeve by the gold seniority stripes.

"Then take the ship," he laughed. "You and Carth are pilots, not me."

Bastila's face scrunched up as she tightened her grasp on Coriff's arm.

"You are being _absolutely_ impossible. You're a Jedi now, take this off so we can-" Bastila was cut off when Coriff wrenched his arm out of her grip roughly and stomped off to the loading ramp.

More chastising words were ready to tumble out of her throat when the loud pursuit of her boots across the deck stopped Coriff in his steps at the top of the loading ramp, his hand resting on the control pad.

"You are making it _very_ difficult to be patient with you, Bastila. Just wait on the ship. I will be back this evening," Coriff growled. The strain of his patience was evident in the wavering tamber in his voice like a predator animal withholding their instinct.

"_I'm_ making it difficult!? Here you are _wasting_ our time on this when Darth Malak is about to penetrate into the Core Worlds, _we're_ the only ones who can stop him, and yet somehow this is the most important thing we can be doing right now? Don't think I have no sympathy for you-"

"Bastila…" Coriff warned.

"-as I most certainly _do_ because I've _seen_ how much this has been hurting you in… your…"

Coriff's ersatz teacher, mentor, and heroine of the Republic trailed off meagerly as she met Coriff's cold, blank eyes fixing themselves upon her own, like a mining drill boring into the very material of her soul.

"You've seen?" Coriff asked quietly.

The air was so still it was toxic. If neither party said anything they might as well have choked to death.

"It is… a factor of our-"

"You've been watching my _dreams_? Like the one about the Star Map back on Dantooine?" His voice shook, whether it was in fear or rage even he did not know.

Bastila crossed her arms and lifted her chin. "It is a function of our bond in the Force – it isn't something I choose to do. We occasionally see each other's dreams whether we like it or not."

Coriff's hand slid down from the panel and gradually returned to his side. His fingers were _trembling_ when on both hands they curled into white, crushed fists.

"If you ever see one of my dreams again… then you had better close your eyes, or look, away, or _something _like that because I _do not give you consent_! You are not allowed to… my… I… these are my-" Coriff began slowly but descended into a frustrated waterfall of angry words wrestling with each other to be said first. His eyes were aflame and his breath grew quick.

"Coriff there is _nothing_ I can do about this, this is just something we have to deal with going forward! I- I can only imagine how violated you must feel, but please remember that all of this is the will of the Force and-"

"THEN TO HELL WITH THE FORCE!" He bellowed.

Bastila took a single, waning step back and attempted to placate him. "The Force is a gift, there's no way-"

"The Force can have their gift back," Coriff seethed. "What _is_ all of this? A Force bond? We barely know each other. All I did was pluck you off of Taris and now I'm a slave to fate? Do you think if anyone else had survived and found you instead, maybe _they_ would be doing this too?"

The rising volume of their argument attracted some attention on the ship, and their crew mates slid behind corners for the best vantage point to hear without being seen.

"If it was just Carth who found you, would you have Force bonded _him_ instead? Maybe they would have made him a Jedi instead and he would have to give up everything to be a monk just like all you people!"

"Coriff, don't talk like that, you are a _Jedi_ and you know-"

"Not by my own choice," Coriff chuckled painfully, raising his arms. "I didn't ask for any of this. I'm doing my job, and then one day I have to throw it all away to be a part of the Republic's little sorcery club, and that's really all this is?"

Coriff dipped his face into his hands and groaned. "I'm a Force prodigy and for whatever reason I can watch your memories of killing Revan, and we're the last hope of the entire Republic," he ripped off his uniform cover and pulled his arms back to his side. "Because that's what you and the Order care about, right? My latent talents that accidentally made me more than just a dumb soldier, but even with all of that I'm _still_ putting you out for a stupid little obsession with _other_ dumb soldiers."

Bastila snarled and immediately returned fire. "You understand _nothing_, Coriff. Nothing about the _Force_, nothing about _fate_, and nothing about what needs to be _done_. You aren't just a tool to us but you're really starting to sound like one!"

He laughed uproariously in response. "Oh, she finally admits it! To _us_ she says, so of course I'm a tool for the Order and their witch-at-large war heroine. I'll give you credit where credit's due with the Battle Meditation, but other than that, maybe you people need to understand that the rest of the galaxy won't kiss the ground you walk on! Why don't you educate me, then? Since you know so much, why don't you tell me more about _Coriff Bannick_ and about _fate_ and all these things I supposedly don't know shit about?" Coriff tapped his chest a few times. "Don't worry, I'll probably die soon just like Trask and you can skip _my _funeral too!"

"That is _not_ what this is about!" Bastila nearly _yelled_.

"Remember the Jedi Code, Bastila," Coriff teased, wagging a finger, "there is no emotion?"

She sucked in the slowest, deepest, angriest breath of her entire life.

"If you think I don't care about everyone who sacrificed their lives for us on the _Endar Spire_, then you're wrong. My only concern is getting on with the mission so the Republic they died to protect might still exist."

Coriff snorted. "You Jedi can't be fucked to care, can you? You all just don't kriffing care about how every one of those sailors died, do you? Maybe I'll be your tool. I guess I don't have a choice in the matter. But I would rather have a man like Trask here than _any_ Jedi."

Bastila stifled a gasp and called on the Force to suppress her instinct to strike him right then and there.

"You were an incredible soldier Coriff. There's no denying any of that," she looked at the rack of medals whose significance she taught herself to understand long ago. "You've sacrificed. You have fought _your_ battles, but don't you think for a second that I haven't fought _mine_."

Coriff was only taken aback for a split-second until he donned that mask of anger and derision once again.

But it didn't take a Jedi to spot it.

"I've spent the last two years of my life doing _nothing_ but meditating in the armored citadels of cruisers and transports, going from battle to battle to battle, and let me tell you something about Battle Meditation…" she spat. "I can feel _every_ soldier on my side and _every_ soldier on the other side and I can feel it when they die, too," Bastila gulped. "It's like the Force is telling me I'm a failure, a _murderer_ whenever I'm not good enough. Even when we win…" she finished in a faltering whisper.

Coriff pressed his jaw tight. He needed something else to make him feel strong, and nothing so impious as calling on the Force at a time like this.

"I have been _trying_ to keep innocent people alive and that's what I'm doing now."

It was an impassable gulf of silence which held them apart then, all of their anger exposed and left raw, as if to ask the other "what now?"

Perhaps one of them would shift and the other hiss out a breath. There wasn't enough energy left to call out the others – Juhani, Carth, Mission, Zaalbar, and the astromech droid for eavesdropping had it interested them in the first place.

Coriff gently re-affixed his cap and afforded Bastila a respectful nod.

"I apologize for my outburst, Master Jedi. I beg your pardon."

He turned, lowering the ramp and looking back one last time.

"I will return after the ceremony has concluded."

%%%

%%%

The _Ebon Hawk_ crew, minus one, observed the procession lining up from the stands which had been erected on either side of the plaza for mourners to gather and observe without obstructing the funeral march. Beneath the imposing façade of House Ulgo's palatial fortress was arranged its most tragic of ceremonies for any family to undertake.

Rites for a son who would be outlived by their parents.

Alderaan was gorgeous in the summer – her long growing seasons made lush its verdant plains and breathtaking mountains in whose bosom hid alpine meadows more famous than any in the galaxy. Situated miles south of the ancient city of Juranno, House Ulgo's sprawling estate boasted spectacular views of the city skyline and the white peaks framing it. Between the city and the estate, and stretching into the horizon in every other direction were the verdant lowlands invigorated by a strong rainy season; explosive with color, and flourishing with crop.

It was a terrible day for rain.

Carth pointed out to Bastila all the intricate preparations, from the composition of the procession, the style and colors of the flowers, even the exact spacing of the artillery gunners for their closing salute. A ray shield extended over the stands which helped accomplish the impossible: make Bastila feel even worse looking down at Coriff readying the procession.

Fully exposed to the deluge with only a thin rain sheet over his combination cover, he conducted inspection of the other five pallbearers as though the rain did not bother him at all – the gray all-weather coats the six had secured over their uniforms could not have provided much protection against the rage of the storm, already pushing the storm drains' capacity to the absolute limit and pooling over the natural dugouts.

Coriff stopped in front of each man, eyes scanning up and down, and then he would reach out and re-affix some pin or medal so that it would no longer be microscopically displaced from its authorized position. Next he would order they turn around, so that he could check the fit of the uniforms, look for stains, and see if anything needed straightening. Then they would button their coats up and remain at attention until Coriff finished his appointed rounds.

The rain tapping on the ray shield above their heads drowned out the call to begin the procession when Bastila saw Coriff and the other five pallbearers snap to attention. They marched smartly to either side of the speeder-drawn caisson, and as one element – three on each side – lifted it smoothly over their shoulders.

And that was how it began, in a style which blended the millennia-old traditions of Alderaanian royalty with the rigid decorum of the Republic Navy, when six men marched the casket up the plaza at a slow pace, followed by the family – the graying Duke and bleary-eyed Duchess Ulgo, their teenage son-now-heir, and both young daughters. Behind them was a naval honor guard platoon, followed by other close members and allies of the sublime House Ulgo.

When the flag-draped casket was marched to the top of the steps of the fortress, ushers in the employ of the royal house directed those seated out of the stands and into the plaza behind the official procession. Bastila and Juhani idly held up their hands, drawing a shield over their group which the rain scattered off of in much the same fashion as an umbrella.

Once the guests were arranged behind the procession the six-man honor guard proceeded into the great hall at the same deliberate pace as before. It took fifteen minutes for everyone to file slowly inside, one and all doing their best to step gingerly and not squeak their wet shoes on the priceless Ithorian marble floors. The crew of the _Ebon Hawk_ stood near the back overlooking the crowd on temporary wooden risers brought in as yet another unspoken thanks on behalf of the Ulgos to their guests.

A Republic Navy chaplain read a brief service, and as Carth had explained prior, the six pallbearers took the Republic flag from over the casket and held it taut on a stone platform at the center of the chamber.

But what Carth had not predicted as it was an idiosyncratic aspect of Alderaanian noble funerals was that the subsequent firing of the gun volleys did not begin. Instead, the chaplain pulled a small whistle from her breast pocket blew into it, marking a key for the pallbearers.

"_Tormented to death by a heavy captivity_…" their voices began, lifting a haunting chorus together which ensnared each soul in the room, implicating them in the family's grief.

"_You've died a noble death,_

_In the struggle for the people's cause._

_You have found an honest death,_

_And you've served not long, but proudly…_"

Bastila's heart stood still when she picked out Coriff's voice in the singers. His rich bass shone like a moonlit sky, shaken by not a single tremor of sadness for all the deep melancholy each word cried.

"_For the good of our home._

_And we, your brothers in the cause,_

_Have carried you to the graveyard._

_Our enemy did not sneer at you._

_You were surrounded by your people,_

_We ourselves have closed your brave eyes._"

For the next verse the Republic Navy honor guard platoon joined in. They added a righteous depth, signifying the joining of all the people in song for the deceased.

"_No grief crushed my soul,_

_No tears shone in my eyes._

_When we say goodbye to you,_

_Your dust shall be covered with earth."_

Carth's voice rising up in the final voice startled Bastila and the other members of the crew. It seemed hundreds of others in the crowd were joining in, and no shortage of them with gleaming eyes and paths of lone tears carving down their cheeks.

"_But we know, our dear brother_

_What's coming out of our bones_

_Your avengers will rise with each other_

_Marching out from your beloved home!_"

The pounding of the artillery salute blended with the echo and rose into heaven.

The pallbearers folded the Republic flag, and while a single musician played farewell, Coriff alone took the triangle of fabric in his arms like a precious babe and stepped respectfully to the family, appointed in black.

All was silent when he knelt down before Trask Ulgo's young teenage brother - pock-marked, lanky, and thin, drawing himself as tall as he could to be a man in that terrible moment.

"On behalf of the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, the Republic Navy, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service."

%%%

%%%

"My family and I wanted to thank you for being here today, Master Jedi."

Coriff lifted the uniform cover off of his head and held it humbly against his heart. "Please. This was how he knew me, I just wanted to give him all the respect that I could. That he _deserves_."

Duke Ulgo smiled and squeezed the man's shoulder. "We're happy either way. Robes or not, I know that we are all honored to have had one of Trask's closest friends and a Jedi no less bring him home to us," he gave a moment for the Duchess, so tall and strong, to see out a painful sob. "You will always be a son of House Ulgo, Coriff. If there's anything we can do for you…"

"Please," Coriff shook his head. "It was my privilege to be here for him. I would have gladly died in his stead, were it up to me."

Duke Ulgo sighed and shook his head. "He wouldn't have been able to live with himself. You and I both know that," he looked back for a few moments at the casket lying under the skylights, enjoying the effect since the storm had passed. "You meant a lot to him."

"I didn't expect to be the chief of the honor guard," Coriff blurted.

"If only from the letters on the datapad in the effects that you brought back with the sword that he never had the opportunity to send…" Duke Ulgo smiled warmly, "For all the time you spent living together on the _Endar Spire_ he saw you like one of his siblings. We wanted the pallbearers to be all military, naturally…"

Coriff "uhumed" and nodded. "Of course."

"…and so it was you. There's nobody else we would have picked."

"Thank you sir," Coriff shook his hand firmly. "And thank you ma'am… sir, ladies…" he paid his respects to the rest of the family and let them move on to receiving the rest of the funeral party.

The Duchess Ulgo hesitated a moment, and came back to hug Coriff one last time and kiss his cheek.

"He would have been so proud of you, you know. A Jedi, saving the whole Republic," she dabbed her eyes. "If there's anything that his sacrifice could be worth…"

Coriff silently offered his handkerchief and a final hug in parting.

And so Coriff stood alone at the edge of the chamber save for a handful of other scattered mourners and two rifle-armed guards of House Ulgo at their still vigil on either side of the casket. Without hundreds of other people the main hall seemed more like a desert of marble, a true voyage from one side to the other.

And he felt small.

Obnoxiously, horrifically, terribly small just like before. He crossed his arms and looked down, burning into the marble with anger meant for himself pooled in those eyes. "_Honoring his memory already_," he thought to himself.

If he had been a Jedi he would have killed the Sith and saved Trask, Besh Squad, maybe saved Taris by getting Bastila out sooner.

He was reminded of the words of Rezet Tur-Mukan, the Naval Commandos' legendary founder and the originator of just about any commando saying which came up in regular conversation. "Cult of personality" might have been too strong a label, but not by much.

"_You're tied to fate like a hound pulled by a cart. And you can fight or walk with it, but it pulls you either way_."

And he wondered how many tragedies he could interrupt by walking with fate instead of fighting it. Attendants with brooms pushed all of the muddy tracks of water together so they could shove it out of the front doors, out of Trask's sight. It would do no good to honor him with a musty great hall.

The steady hum of conversation in the next room over was joined by the soft patter of boots.

"I'm sorry about what I said," Coriff spoke first.

Bastila tented her hands in front of her stomach and stared ahead at the casket.

"I think we both said things we shouldn't have."

Coriff replaced his cover on his head now that the family had passed out. "I came up with some terrible things, Bastila," he asserted.

"And you were wrong to do so. But I was so anxious to get moving I was callous to just how important this was to you… just… how important it was in general," Bastila struggled.

"That was no excuse for me to say the things I did," he countered. "I'm a Jedi now, aren't I? I brought up a lot of pain for you on a day with too much pain already. Trask's day."

"Trask's day…" she trailed. "Trask's day indeed."

They were silent for a moment as the sweeping attendants pulled a service door closed behind them.

"Walk with me?" Bastila asked.

In the height of summer was when the kalx flowers stood their tallest and unleashed the aroma of citrus, which in the slowly evaporating wash of morning rain floated up above the walls of the Ulgo estate, up on the battlements and catwalks of the sort that an evening thinker would take advantage with hands folded behind the back and tucked underneath a flowing baronial robe.

"Your awards… a Distinguished Medal of Valor?"

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised you recognize it. I wonder if you've spent the same fraction of your life at war as I have. You understand things more than I give you credit."

"Credit I'm not entirely sure I would deserve," she said, looking down at the garden streams beneath the walls. "I spend a lot of time in cocoons, behind fortress walls or in the citadels of heavy cruisers. It is rare that I've ever felt truly in danger."

"Did you feel it when you fought with Revan?"

"Your distinguished medal." Although her head was turned away from him Coriff saw the hint of a melancholy smile from the wrinkling of her cheek. "Can you tell me how you earned it?"

"It isn't classified, whether or not I could keep anything like that from you in the first place. Or if it would matter, since you're Bastila Shan."

"That isn't what I meant." She paused at a section of the wall where a towering ballalock tree brushed the edge of the masonry. Bastila separated a fragrant leaf from its petiole with a whisk of her finger, floating it over to Coriff with the Force. "I want your permission to know, even if it does come up in a dream we one day share. This is so much change for you in such a short time – you didn't agree to give up all that space and so the least I can do is respect what's left."

Coriff enjoyed the palmate leaf's minty scent which reminded him of that morning's breakfast tea.

"It was from Devaron. The one I kept dreaming about on Dantooine."

"Is it… a difficult memory?"

"No, it isn't," Coriff laughed and shook his head. "Except for the Sith shooting down our primary exfiltration it went down as good as anyone might have hoped. We got the plans, neutralized the target of opportunity, and everyone came home safe. Anyone's guess why I keep dreaming about it."

"Even the pilot?"

"Even the pilot."

"And so I presume that's what the medal was awarded for," Bastila asked.

"The pilot," Coriff shrugged, "and killing Iyassa. She was one of Malak's better commanders. With her gone and those plans back at our headquarters the Devaronians made short work of the invasion. We still hold that salient today."

"One of a few precious things still keeping us alive. Now what about the Medal of Valor?" Bastila pointed to the second most senior medal in his top rack.

"Allanteen. It was a prison break operation. We had a stolen ore freighter with Sith codes – I heard it was one of Revan's old tricks. Loaded it up with a couple hundred shooters and faked an equipment failure so the prison station would let us dock."

"I remember it was all anyone could talk about in the Order the day that news broke," her eyes glistened wistfully. "Eight Jedi, all rescued alive before the torturers or the interrogators could have their way. Nobody I knew, but friends of friends. It was the first good news for us in a very long time. I wish I could've seen the look on Malak's face when they told him."

"You would know something about the Republic Navy keeping Jedi out of Malak's clutches, eh? We've made it a habit of disappointing him. I think you owe me," Coriff teased.

Bastila sighed dramatically. "I've already admitted that I would never have escaped Taris without you and Carth. What more could I owe you?"

"What was it like killing Revan? Did he go down fighting, or did he try to surrender? It doesn't sound like something he would do, but you never know about those Sith cowards. I bet he was begging for his life, wasn't he?"

Bastila was quiet for a moment and Coriff was afraid of having leapt a severe personal boundary.

"Tell me about one of those Knight's Gold Crescents," she finally replied.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry… you're making me do a lot of apologizing, you know?" Coriff put up his hands in surrender. "Just that we all hate the guy for turning on us."

"A Knight's Gold Crescent is still a major award. I'm not lying when I say that I'm curious."

"I get it." Coriff chuckled.

He cleared his throat and leaned over the battlements, scanning the plains for the right illustration.

"There," he pointed at a steep hill which jutted out above all the shallower knolls. "I was on a hill just like that one, just that we were in the woods." His face softened with memory and his storyteller's voice dropped an octave. "During the worst of the Sith invasion, the Core offensives, when I had only just been a grunt. I never had the chance to prove myself during the mop-up battles of the last war when I first enlisted with the Naval Infantry."

"Because you didn't go with Revan," Bastila said quietly.

"And I was lucky. Maybe I would have gone traitor if I did. That said," Coriff pointed around the hill, "I was on detachment with a regular unit in the woods outside Bana City on Ralltiir. Back at the start of the onslaught there were so many regular army divisions getting chewed up that most of the marines were getting pulled off of ships to bring them up to strength. Even heard of a few divisions made out of sailors and aviation ground crews. We had two strongpoints there," Coriff squinted and pointed at the very top of the hill, "and _there_ with lascannons and anti-tank rockets because the 418th Reserve Infantry Division had just been driven off leaving nothing between a Sith mechanized corps and the highway going straight into the city – and our rear area."

"I remember Ralltiir," said Bastila. "I was there at the end, during the retreat. The army transports were still leaving the atmosphere when the first Republic cruisers were charging up their hyperdrives to escape."

"I… nobody ever told us _you_ were there." Coriff gaped and chuckled.

"Most never know. My whereabouts are naturally a tightly-kept secret and unless someone knows they are being acted upon with Battle Meditation, it can feel simply like an extraordinary second wind. I was only able to keep the fleet in order long enough for the transports to escape under escort."

"I was on one of the last ships out. Sounds like I owe you my life." Coriff slapped her on the back.

She looked down, smiling bitterly. "Maybe so," she mused. Her eyes lifted suddenly and met his stare. "But you should tell me how you got that award."

"Right, well…" Coriff scratched his chin. "I was at the top of the hill when we ambushed the van of a Sith column heading into the city. I guess they didn't expect there to be any intact units in their path since their recon detachment was all mixed up with the vanguard. Distance was a hundred yards, sighting was good, we let off all the rockets we had, knocked out maybe fifty or sixty vehicles before the infantry got their act together and pushed on us. And they pushed _hard_. Brought up all the mortars and the self-propelled artillery and just crashed it down wherever they saw rocket smoke."

"Were you with the commandos yet at that time?" Bastila probed.

"Well yes and no, since I was a Staff Sergeant at that time and I was just out of training. A lot of the teams were still reforming on Carida after the disaster at Randon," a memory Bastila instinctively winced at, "and so they just stuck me back with my old unit, and then they split me off to _another_ one that morning to replace a squad leader from a separate company who had just stepped on a mine. Anyhow with the bombardment over it was just me and one other guy not dead or wounded – he was the lascannon gunner. Poor kid never used one in the field before. He was so overwhelmed by it he just let the focusing chamber overheat and spall in the assembly. I ran off to get a new one."

Coriff paused for effect,

"I come back and there's three Sith troopers standing over his body. They'd been moving up in little groups, throwing up covering fire for the advance teams. They move smart and they shoot smart. I guess he just wasn't able to keep them off him with a blaster pistol alone. Naturally I shot the bastards and took over the lascannon…"

"Well? And then?"

"Truth be told…" he crabbed, "I don't remember much after that. I was so full of adrenaline and I just wanted to rip them apart for killing my gunner."

Coriff stepped away from the edge of the battlement and continued walking. They left the platforms and the walls when they descended a narrow staircase into a hidden garden path.

"I remember…" Coriff strained. "I remember my platoon sergeant yanking me off the gun by the collar. There must have been a line of bodies about yea long under the crest of the hill where I'd been shooting. We fled deeper into the woods, out by one of the service roads, where our lieutenant was screaming into a radio set at the medical point. There had to be a hundred guys lying there…"

"How many were in your unit at the start?"

"A hundred and fifty at most. Paper strength was one-twenty but we had a Rendili platoon meet up with us at the ambush point."

"Who let you get into _that_ situation…" Bastila whispered hoarsely, forgetting herself in her awe.

"We were supposed to be a speedbump. If we had to die to keep the Sith from interrupting the evacuation from Bana City, who were we to say it was a bad trade? We wreaked _hell_ on that column. Took 'em a good two hours to get moving again. By that time one of the Rendili fortress divisions was already getting into position outside the city." Coriff glanced down at his medals. "So I guess it was worth it after all."

"But how did you get out?" She beseeched. Bastila's arms twitched and it was clear she resisted the brief urge to fidget away her nerves.

"Your guess is as good as mine. We had a _dip_ order, that means 'die in place.' A few light speeders dropped us off and headed back into the city and we rightly never expected to see them again. The lieutenant was begging for anything to come extract us: at least come get the wounded, at least get the guys who can't fight out of here, all of that. He screamed his lungs off on the A-set, and I guess that didn't work so he started listing off the names of men still alive. Me included, naturally. Maybe he felt like he could guilt command into detailing an evac."

Coriff stuffed his gloved hands into his jacket pockets and stared quizzically at a thoba rose bush. "And the craziest thing about it? I think it _worked_. I remember the lieutenant just went quiet, and then he said alright, and that he would wait one. Ten minutes later there's a whole _company_ of tanks and armored ambulances coming up the road. Some of the guys wanted to go out with the tanks and hit the Sith column _again_," Coriff laughed grimly. "It was actually _my_ idea, so don't let anyone else take credit. Either way, we loaded up… and we were back in Bana City getting on the transports less than an hour later."

"Who made the decision to split off those units to evacuate you?"

"You know, I never found out. I suppose it could've been anyone on our frequency. I heard rumors that a Jedi was supervising the battle out of Fort Ontis – not _you_, but a Jedi Master that would hop on the comms every now and again asking for information. The men were calling him Uncle Olds since he always sounded like he was about to croak. As a matter of fact he reminds me a lot of Master Vrook."

"It could have been him," Bastila answered quickly. "What the masters did in the field has never been my business."

"Maybe I'll ask him someday when this is all over. Hell, I bet he would be shocked to _ever_ hear from us. I bet he's got money on me falling to the dark side before we even wrap up with Tatooine."

"He might have money on you falling before we leave _Alderaan_."

Coriff's eyes bulged out – and in between the spasms of laughter he made a number of attempts to say her name. "Bas… Bastil… Bastila!"

"Oh please do _try_ to be more mature, it wasn't _that_ funny…"

"No, but…" he wiped a stray tear out of his eye. "Bastila Shan making a _joke_, about a Jedi Master no less. I never thought I'd see the day."

"Wh- surely it can't be _that_ hard to believe I have a sense of humor!" Bastila planted her hands upon her hips. "I can be quite socially adept whenever the situation requires," she scolded.

"You know, I think it's one of those things where _if you have to say it_…"

She huffed and turned away.

Coriff chuckled and set himself down on a mossy stone bench centered underneath the bowing arms of an imported blba tree. He shut his eyes and enjoyed the sound of those waxy leaves brushing against one another in the breeze, just as they had on Dantooine. He felt as though this was a repeat of that time – Bastila fuming at something he said and the placid comfort of the natural world filling in the spaces.

"And the rest of your awards?" Bastila asked softly with crossed arms, her back still turned.

"Would you believe me if I said I didn't remember?"

He couldn't see her expression.

"Because I don't, and it takes me a lot to admit it and I wish you would respect that," Coriff finished quietly.

Her lips drawn in a single tense line the urge to slink down to the bench took over, and beside him she sat, only meeting his eyes once the instinct sealing her up had dissipated.

"I didn't know there were things you didn't… _remember_," she said. And he believed her.

"The report says I was on…" he paused. In the moment his confidence deserted him he was left staring inwardly at the leaden stretch of his own life. Where the light of fate was a red sunset upon the old days it nevertheless seized a kernel of doubt: weaknesses that could still hold him back. The Republic needed him to be strong.

"Can I trust you?" Coriff asked suddenly.

She placed an hand on his shoulder. "If this is something you aren't comfortable talking about, by all means don't-"

"I want to," he barked. "You deserve to know."

And so he told her things that not even Trask knew in the end. How the cruiser _Beiya Segretain_ was ambushed as part of a larger battlegroup mere weeks before Revan's death. How he was just a fresh Commando School graduate, when the whole convoy broke apart under concentrated Sith fire. How they were caught with most of the ship asleep, and how the auxiliary dormitory collapsed in on itself. How the report Coriff read told him that he was dragged out unconscious bleeding from the cranium.

How in one day, like a single thunderbolt striking home, the body was a stranger born to himself when half a life's worth of memories disappeared, and how in the night his dreams were the arbiters of torment and in the day his mind's bond to the flesh would flicker away – never completely, always returning, as if teasing him to the point of abuse. But the tutelary shadow of the Naval Commandos remained – his discipline as a man of the fleet, able to provide what he could provide in a desperate war where the act of striking living names from the roll was unspeakable.

"I proved myself, Bastila. I swear I would've never put myself back in with the teams if I didn't feel one hundred percent capable. This has never held me back, in battle. When I think about my mother and father…" his eyes glazed over, "I see faces without features. No colors, no life to any of it. I remember a town on Deralia: it was called Saida. I don't remember a single building or a day of school or any of my friends. Just more featureless, colorless fronts. And I think if I ever went back it wouldn't feel like home at all. Not for lack of trying."

"You told me Deralia wasn't part of the Republic. Is that why?"

"Well I have to imagine that's the reason. I've put in five or six leave chits this year to visit for a few days. All during workdown periods post-deployment. They say it's too far or they don't like how I filled out the document…" Coriff lifted a hand and pantomimed firing a blaster. "But I can still do this. Of all the things I could've remembered, it was how to do my job."

He reached inside of his jacket and pulled out the lightsaber he built with his own hands just days ago. When ignited it shone a crisp and brilliant ocean blue, mystifying in depth and glow.

"And now I can do this…"

Bastila took in the particularly unusual sight of an individual dressed in a Republic Navy formal uniform idly waving the beam of a lightsaber thinking of a thousand different things she had no right to say.

"It scares me. Being a Jedi. Having this power. I just… I wonder why I _am_ this way. I can't make any sense of things anymore. It's like I'm not tethered to the ground and I can only watch these things happen to me."

"I can only imagine how this feels for your Coriff. No time to decompress, going from Taris straight into your training as a Jedi. It is certainly a lot all at one time."

Coriff stared into the maw of the blade. "I saw that Dark Jedi on the _Endar Spire_ kill an entire squad of commandos like it was nothing. If it hadn't been for Trask I would've been next. One of my men, he just… he took his hand like this," Coriff slowly turned his free palm out. "And he _twisted_ his head off of his body in a _second_. Like it was nothing at all." His voice rattled from the flavor of hate. "And now _I_ have that kind of power. And I just…"

In one movement he deactivated the saber and replaced it in his jacket. He planted his elbows on his legs and sank his face into his hands.

"I keep wishing that this is just another dream and that I'm not a Jedi and _nobody_ has these powers in the first place. But I never wake up. And I've never _felt_ the urge to fall but you and Master Vrook make it sound like such an easy thing and maybe I'll stumble, and one day it'll just _happen_ and I- I see myself ripping someone's head off or killing them with lightning and… you have to promise me something."

He lifted his eyes and Bastila saw them like two forlorn brown trenches.

"You won't fall, Coriff," she assured him quietly. "In the absence of a Jedi Master I will guide you as best I can. I can promise you that."

"I want you to kill me if I fall."

"You will not _fall_ Coriff. You're far too dedicated. Think of all the things you've accomplished," Bastila started counting on her fingers. "On Devaron, over Allanteen, on Ralltiir, _continuing_ to fight even after your incident. What you accomplished on Taris rescuing me from the Vulkars. The path of the light isn't easy, but neither are all of the things you've _already_ accomplished."

"Huh." Coriff smiled faintly. "You might not be half-bad, you know that Bastila?"

She rolled her eyes and slapped him roughly on the arm. "Have you _any _capacity to be pleasant?"

"Sorry," he cackled, "I hit my head and got the Force instead of decorum. Can't have both."

For a moment he thought Bastila might've been about to laugh.

"I'm going to do my best for the Republic. As a _Jedi_. For Trask, for the crew, for everyone," he looked over. "And for you. I can't imagine what you've sacrificed to be here. I think you deserve someone on your side."

"Your words give me solace, Coriff Bannick. I admit that it is good to talk about these things. Sometimes I get so caught up in every battle, how as a Jedi I can't save all the people I want to save. I was raised to value life – _all _life – and yet I have to sit and watch people like you and Trask pay for the mistakes of the Order every day."

"Master Dorak always talks about that," Coriff grunted. "Maybe things would have been different if the whole Order went to war. Maybe they should've supervised Revan, if they didn't join him. But I think he made his own choice. That isn't your fault."

He thumped his fingers on the bench.

"Not _our_ fault. Still not used to that."

Bastila smiled faintly, then it waned. "For what it's worth, I forgive you. I know you didn't mean what you said earlier." She sighed. "You felt that I was insulting Trask's memory, so you lashed out. Because you're…"

She gulped, and they stared at each other for a moment.

"Because you're a… a good man."

He smiled.

"I forgive you too. Your heart was in the right place and you just chose the wrong words. Even if what I said _was_ a little worse," Coriff chuckled. "But once the mission is over you have to tell me how you fought Revan."

"If you insist," she stood up and adjusted her robes. "Then it's all under the bridge," Bastila declared as aristocratically as the day they first met. "Partners, Padawan Gunnery Sergeant Coriff Bannick?"

"Partners."

He took the offered hand.

%%%

%%%

At dinner the crew was seated on the veranda facing to the north, the commanding views of the city of Juranno. Only the best Alderaanian haute cuisine had been prepared for House Ulgo's guests that evening, so that once more nobody could say they were being ungrateful for the support shown in a dark time.

Coriff watched the lights come on in the distance in waves and clusters when the sun finally disappeared beneath the mountains. And on the hour, the New Juranno Clocktower tolled seven.

Coriff stared into the distance. Beads of sweat gathered on his pale skin and his fingernails dug into his palms so hard that he drew blood ten times.

Although he stood like a gargoyle overlooking the gardens and the distant city on that warm evening he shook like a shorn animal in the depths of winter. His pupils flew from sight to sight.

Looking for escape. Any escape. Steel girders piling over each other and spilling the rivulets of flesh and blood like quicksilver into his nose and mouth and eyes. The tolling marking a chaotic failure.

The fingers dug into his palms were the claws pulling him out. The blood of men who deserved a better fate. People he failed. All dead. All dead. All dead.

All dead.

All dead.

All dead, all dead. All dead, and all dead all most certainly dead.

All dead.

All dead.

All dying.

"Are you alright?" She asked softly.

He released a breath he hadn't been able to finish and gasped. Nodded weakly.

"I'm still alive," only to himself.


	8. Korriban

It had started in such an inconsequential way as most infections do. If the Korriban Academy had picked one moment to look back on, like a patient sailing into the expanse of death bemoaning that one nick of the skin or trifling papercut, it would have been the moment Revan stepped into the Dreshdae colony to witness a Sith apprentice – armed with that ever-sought entrance medallion – torturing with lightning two destitute, servile aliens who had laid themselves to abuse in the hopes that if they begged for power they might someday have it out of pity.

But that Sith took no pity. Naturally there was no strength in groveling and as such the trainee warrior indulged in his power like a child might frolic in a field until that first hopeful Twi'lek's flesh could stand no more electrocution, and life departed him. Revan stepped into the colony to witness this at an instant – one dead, another cowering and begging for life – and an apprentice with blue, crackling fists towering over the both of them. That particular Sith apprentice was intoxicated with his own power: he had spent a lifetime under the cold and harsh ministrations of a hateful, drunken parent, never comprehending the addiction of power until one fateful day he held up his hands against a broken bottle – and that bottle turned in the air against its wielder when a hidden gift made itself known.

In the spray of flesh and blood which followed he was forever baptized in the faith of power. Anything weaker than him he could command to the point of death, as he had been – the wrong lesson was learned, taught to a list of victims which grew at a comfortable pace in his outer rim colony until Sith scouts came upon his dwelling one day with an invitation to grow his might. A lone second's demonstration of Sith sorcery from the group's leader had the young man begging for passage on their ship.

"Pick on someone your own size."

"I think I'll kill the both of you!" He laughed. The _snap-hiss _and red glow of his twin blades illuminated the stilling fear on the surviving Twi'lek victim's face. The esteemed and powerful Apprentice Aruk would kill this interloper and now surely he would kill _her_ too and then-

And in as short of a moment, he was no more. A mighty war-cry was prologue to the Sith apprentice's wanton charge, where in the blink of an eye he was left in two pieces on the ground from one precise strike that penetrated his amateur guard and separated him at the sternum.

Aruk had always intended to become the whole galaxy's antagonist and weave himself a tale whose themes of brutality would strangle a whole people into submission beneath his boot. But he came upon the wrong man at precisely the wrong time, and his death – and the idle seizure of the golden medallion around his neck – would instead mark time minute zero for the invasion of the phage, its perforation into the skin of the Korriban Sith Academy.

It was Revan. _Revan_, he thought, was still an alien name. It was a shocking revelation but one he didn't have the luxury to let set in, at least at first. There was the issue of Malak standing between them and the _Leviathan_'s hangars that needed to be resolved and Coriff… _Revan_ would have been no use to anyone writhing on the ground absorbing the reality of his deranged self-patrimony.

Any Naval Commando or Jedi worth their salt knew that few challenges came to people who were exactly prepared for them, but with all his discipline and all his training it was nothing less than an otherworldly experience to cross blades with Darth Malak. It would've happened, he thought, at some time and in some place when the rough edges were buffed off his form and he had his reliable crew of Jedi behind him. But then he had been aboard the _Leviathan_ with blade crashing on blade, screeching ozone and burning the recycled air, and whether or not he was ready for that battle skill-wise, knowing he was Darth Revan was certainly _no _benefit to keeping his focus.

It took every trick in his arsenal to hold Malak at bay, and to score the lucky hit which grazed the jawless Sith's right bicep, whereupon he disappeared into the labyrinth of redundant blast doors – which, engineered to resist the detonation of loose munitions and fuel in one hangar so that no others would be compromised, dispassionately resisted piercing by a lightsaber which flapped like an insect's wings against their sheer faces.

And so they chased him, navigating the maze of locked and unlocked passageways, when Malak ambushed them from an unexpected direction, and Bastila Shan threw herself into the fray instantly to buy time for Carth and Revan to escape.

It took Carth smashing the stock of a blaster rifle into his ribs to drive Revan off of his wanton assault on the door beyond which their third member disappeared – fists slamming into double-reinforced hull plating until blood was seeping through the gloves once the futility of a lightsaber was proven once again. And in that fashion they escaped, with Carth dragooning them towards their objective, departing on the _Ebon Hawk_ from a burning hangar bay strewn with the bodies of Sith soldiers and apprentices thrown by explosions and holed viciously by Canderous at the controls of the _Hawk_'s ventral gun turret.

Carth had confronted Revan in full view of their crew once the ship vanished into deep space far outside of the sensor range of the Sith ambush cordon. When he stuck his finger in Revan's face and told their allies who their "leader" really was, this fact had been vehemently denied.

It was a lie. Revan – no, _Coriff_ was a good soldier. He fought every day of his adult life and was prepared at all times to die for the cause. Dead or alive, Revan was the enemy… and he _fought_ the Republic's enemies.

It was a trick, and for whatever reason Bastila humored Malak, maybe to make him overconfident or dupe him, to make him think his master's death _hadn't _taken place. But each subsequently more delusional explanation was shot down by an enraged Carth whose grip on the blaster in his belt grew tighter with each of Revan's denials, until he finally drew the weapon and shoved its barrel on the former dark lord's forehead, screaming out vengeance for Telos and his late young family.

And that was when it happened, in one moment the hellacious chaos seized all. It was when Canderous dove on Carth and shoved him to the deck. When HK-47's eyes glowed blood-red and warned the pilot not to threaten his master and creator. When Zaalbar roared and Mission drew her own blaster, hands trembling, unsure who to target, and Juhani and Jolee looked to each other with no idea of what to do.

That was when it happened. The realization, and a ghost of a lifetime's memory curled 'round his psyche like a rolling squall. He was Revan. Coriff Bannick was Revan. And he cried – enraged, terrified, filled with white-hot anger and fear and ferocious agony. He took Carth's blaster which lay unclaimed on the deck as Canderous was occupied locking the pilot in a submission hold and jammed it into his own mouth, barrel oriented towards the brain.

Zaalbar roared again and fell upon Revan with crushing arms and his battle-tank weight before the man he owed a life debt carried out the final act. Canderous, next to be alerted, joined in isolating Revan from his weapons and tying him up for his own safety, separating him from a similarly unarmed Carth and placing them at opposite sides of the common room.

So he had all the time to weep. He cursed fate, and the Force, and apologized for everything he was. Even as he hoped it was all wrong, and he was still Coriff and always was Coriff, even if the suspicious tract of his career in the Republic military obviously invalidated. He was bonded to Bastila. He was the Dark Lord of the Sith, the greatest general and the greatest traitor the Republic had ever known. A warrior without equal who gathered under him legions of followers and bountiful achievements as a hero – a hero who understood and loved his men, trained with them, and was thus loved and understood in turn. A hero who fell to the allure of power and returned to satisfy greed and bloodlust.

How for every good thing Coriff had done – how he stuck unerringly to the righteous path of sacrifice expected of the Jedi, he would never not be Revan. In a strange way it felt as unfair as being saddled with the guilt for a father's sins, or the crimes of a precursor, not his own. Revan was a title… Revan was a word others could call him, but inside he was _Coriff_. He had to be. He spent a _real_ period of his life living that way, _knowing_ Revan was dead and _knowing_ he was like any other man.

He was like all the men he fought shoulder-to-shoulder with before, men from the army and the navy who were all the humble, volunteer sentient called to fulfill a citizen's role. All those men who for over a year – a _real_ year, he told himself – died alongside him, and some who died at his own command. How could he claim any victory now, trophies earned by cashing the blood of good men and women? How could he have ever demanded their sacrifices – as his leaders, his followers, and as his equals? How could he have asked them to sacrifice for _Revan_, their mortal enemy, living and eating and listening right under their noses, learning their plans, posted in their bases, receiving their training.

How much sacrifice did he poison by living duplicitously? The Republic was a vast climax oak, and beneath her roots pooled the blood of heroes cut down to save her. Now an entire reservoir of this nourishing water was blackened, set ill and toxified by his hand.

On the lee side of that fateful day and after a night without rest, Revan sat on the deck by the hatch to the cockpit, enjoying how the cold from the metal trickled into his back. Across from him he dimly followed T3's repairs to the navigation and security computers and the pall of smoke which rose off of his torch-tool, meandering through the blue light which followed the fitful and irregular mutter of sparks. However burdensome it was to continue living – and however much he still called himself Coriff inside – it was a little thing like this which reminded him how nothing had really changed.

He shut his eyes and groaned. If nobody ever told him the truth it would've been as good as fake anyways, and he would still have clear objectives and the faculties to accomplish them. What was different now, just that he had a glut of realizations lined up in his mind waiting for the time to be processed?

He supposed that nothing really _was_ different as far as the practicals were concerned, and he had always done his job anyhow. It was his determination that set him apart, in every unit and on every operation he'd ever been assigned, and even through the condensed Jedi training. A relentless devotion towards completing the mission.

Revan pulled himself off of the deck and entered the cockpit. Carth and Revan both politely ignored each other but the shifting in the air was palpable. Revan set his hands on the command console and leaned forward slightly, assuming the supervisory stance of a mission commander. _The_ mission commander. That much had not changed; whatever pretense had there been that Bastila was in charge had melted away by the time the stolen _Ebon Hawk_ was making for Dantooine at best possible speed, a broken Taris in her wake.

Bastila. One of many realizations. His heart wrapped over itself with torturous knots at the very thought of her now, wondering if she hated him, if she was alright, where she was and what she was doing and if she had anything to eat, if it was frigid or searing where she was now certainly imprisoned and if she really did love him anyhow.

Love. The thought of the word made Revan grind his teeth and curse the obsolescence of his own rationality. It had been so easy to say sauntering back and forth under the warming lights of Anchorhead Cantina on a dreamlike evening. It was a mutual fantasia and a collaborative lie that they were just two people together waltzing to music – a very easy lie, since playing it earned a passionate dividend, close embrace, and lips on fire while everything else was forgotten.

It had been a fantasy for him and a dream that made itself real. And now Revan could only imagine it had been quite the opposite for Bastila, more of a nightmare realized than a pleasant thought. The Dark Lord of the Sith. Darth Revan.

Revan. _Him_. Holding _her_ close and drifting forward and back, left and right under a hypnosis brewed from equal parts Coruscanti jazz and her steel gray eyes, powerful and full and staring back at _him_ and nothing else in the world. How the warmth slewing over his palms contrasted with the beautiful cold in her irises, like a thin plate of ice over a tranquil pond or the dazzling silver walls of a glacier whose magnitude stirred the heart of its witnesses, who became weak in its presence. A cold which wasn't frigid, or biting or painful but more like the draught of perfect ice water on a boiling day – a coolness he needed to live, that brought him divine relief and which after discovering realized he could never again live without. It was rejuvenating, _terrifying_, and like the wall of the advancing tide was a steady passion overcoming his life.

He knew he loved her, that night, and he knew he could never love another. Coriff, _Revan_ – which of course she knew, and why she fought it so long – told her as much when they danced together and cast off the chains of self control and the legendary Jedi discipline.

But it was when she said those words back that he knew in a way his life was over, because it was his heart in her captivity now and forever. And so their lips met, and under the luscious tones of music their sweltering words traded on whispers from ear to ear, for waiting any longer to say everything had become truly intolerable. They had held each other for four more songs: it was their moment, and as much as they could they thought on time and on each note to make it last as long as possible. There would be no certainty, not on a hunt for Malak, not in war, and certainly not as Jedi. But bounded as they were by their arms and four adobe walls it was a temporary selfish fortress they found themselves in. A time for them, and for nothing else, and they luxuriated in its beauty and fluttering joy until they could balance on the edge no longer, and cast out back to sea as it were, returning to the _Ebon Hawk_ before their absence became conspicuous.

A sinful mark, a patch of discolored skin on Revan's shoulder at the edge of where his robe's collar extended. Something she left, half to see if she could do it and the other half from excitement. _Proof_ that they had done what was so expressly forbidden, a sublime emblem of guilt and the exultation of release; that she was the culprit was ever more shocking and ever more thrilling to them both.

Either one of them had so much to say on their short walk back that they had no choice but to say nothing, and instead stare at the stars, hands clasped for those last few moments no-one else would see it.

She was so beautiful to him, in such a shining, immortal way that nothing seemed real. He compared her to the stars up above and found the stars lacking, for she was like a moon so bright and imminent, occupying his sky and filling it with light and extinguishing all the others – and like the moon, unreachable, at the end of outstretched fingers yet no closer for having reached, until one day they _were_ together and the moon came down to meet him. He had wanted that night to go on forever, for there was no discernible way that fantasy could've ever been real, so prolonging the night meant prolonging their dream.

Revan had thought it inopportune at the time, but standing in the cockpit and gazing at the expanse of space flooding away from the cockpit as Carth piloted the ship to Korriban and the penultimate destination of the mission, he yearned to have been braver. He yearned to have fallen to his knees right there, to have kissed Bastila's hand and told her that for all his bravado and suavete he would ever beg to know how to be worthy of her love. That all he wanted was to deserve her, to give in to her unending allure, deep as the ocean, so that the crashing waves could swallow him up and carry him to sea for her.

Naturally all the right words and the distant courage to speak them arrived at that moment, standing in the cockpit. Revan. He was Revan. And she knew this… and still, she said what she'd said and over the immutable exposure of their Force bond he detected not even a mote of a lie.

He had to force himself not to laugh out of respect for Carth's pretend-ignorance at his presence when he asked himself if Bastila was a good enough liar to fake something like that. How easy she was to trip on her words and grow flush in the cheeks…

Well, there was a mission, he thought. A mission from the Republic, and the Jedi, and above all of that a duty to charge against death itself to recover Bastila from Malak's control, wherever she was being kept.

Standing over the console was sobering, rightly so as it was a commander's place to be. Revan, as Coriff, and he supposed as Revan too, had filled that role countless times. Command was a heady wine, assuming a captaincy and authority like conquering a whole bottle, which although bitter, was a taste that could never be abandoned or forgotten. Command – its responsibility and burden – was an addiction in its own right, and Revan wondered if it was one which he grew as Coriff or one that was always there, only to be re-awakened.

It was something he considered often, whether or not Revan was anything like him. If the old Revan was like Revan now, if Coriff was a whole new good and faithful man or if he was an imprint of Revan who simply went by a different name and had brown vice yellow eyes.

Regardless of the nature of those more esoteric questions, Revan told himself there was a mission to be accomplished, and that moping served nobody. It was something he knew as a Naval Commando, and as a Jedi, and something he still knew then, that he could pause for himself for any reason but it would only ever be at the expense of everyone who relied on him. Staring listlessly at a far bulkhead would have been burning time that belonged to the Republic, the Jedi, and now to Bastila Shan. Every question had an answer, and he could have answers any day. But he could only act _now_.

So when Revan enrolled himself in the Korriban Sith Academy, it was with a calm and formidable dedication that unnerved Carth Onasi who had gone along with him. Canderous, naturally, was dazzled.

The infection spilled into the bloodstream and latched on to the first target cells. Other students, sabotaged or killed or redeemed when they could by his action dropped like flies – the subtle mechanisms of the academy bent like steel in the wind, obviously designed to expect strong-willed adepts from time to time, but this was only the teasing first brush of a typhoon.

After the three infiltrators had come across Dustil, Carth was beside himself with joy followed by a rapid and uncontrolled succession of fear, and rage, panic, and sadness. He made Revan promise on his life and the Republic to do everything they could to save him – to make Dustil leave this place.

His son. Dustil Onasi, in the heart of the Sith Empire and his fate in the hands of Revan, Dark Lord of the Sith. Or, so much as he'd been called in the past.

Since the revelation Carth had been quite particular to walk only behind Revan, a heavy blaster overcharged and kept at the hip, level towards his ally's back, at any moment's command prepared to kill. But Revan had never snarled at him; _his_ hands were not sentries hovering atop the two lightsabers in his belt. Juuyo was the fine Jedi art of employing two blades at once, singly or in a double emitter, a chaotic one which required years of intense study to master. And naturally, Revan merely picked it up over the _Hawk_'s travels in the casual manner of a man resting languidly beneath the awning of a streetside café, watching a spectacular performer and thinking "that's something I should consider trying."

Such a feat had come off as rather stupendous, the unique sort of thing just one of many miracles that Coriff Bannick never ceased pulling out of his hat. Yet that wonder and amazement – in Carth's eyes – matriculated into a sense of deep horror knowing that these were merely things that _Revan_ was _remembering_, and that in all likelihood there was no conceivable upper bound to the vast power he might stumble upon in an idle thought and restore to his arsenal as simply as anyone else off the street might be thinking about what to eat for lunch.

What else would he remember, Carth would think, if not just his skills, and maybe his motivations and his lust for power along with it? Would the ability and desire to reduce someone to ash with simple flick of lightning come to him, and would Revan just curl his fingers while walking ahead of him and have this trifling Republic pilot annihilated in the blink of an eye? It made the Arkanian blaster in his hand feel tremendously small and fake as if it were just a child's toy held on to for comfort. It made him wonder how many people the man he thought was his friend had killed – and how many of them were felled with the same thought in their head at the moment of death, "my best odds are to hit him from behind."

Hundreds, at least? He was a majesty of war to think about, let alone see. Triumph after triumph in battle against the likes of Dark Jedi and whole squads of professional soldiers, whether he knew it or not, must have been mere warmups compared to the harshest battles Revan cut his teeth on in the past, and it made Carth feel silly for ever thinking the outcome of a fight could have been perilous when Coriff Bannick was on his side.

He had been the heart of the Republic military at its apex might – part of its unbreakable core formed under the unceasing crucible of war against the Mandalorians. After all the others bled away, only the steel hoplites remained – those Spartans who were more steel than man anyhow – the fires burning off the chaff and the pressure forming them into an invincible machine, and Revan had been _first_ among them.

Like immortal pillars they were placed at the forefront actions, and upon their deployment it followed that wherever they went, victory followed – any attack against them faltered and broke like angry waves scattered before jagged cliffs, and the most unbreakable defenses ever devised shattered under their force, and cunning, and unrelenting power. There were Revanchists all over the military, individually commanding brigades or divisions, ships and fighter squadrons and fleet groups, raising the overall fighting power of the Republic wherever they went, but the legends and titles fell like rain on those famous units led by _many_ Jedi – first was their experimental division, and then the follow-on divisions, and the corps and fleets and army groups the Revanchists came to lead and make their own.

As it came to be, at the end, the whole war effort had been directed by fifteen Marshals of the Republic, eleven of which were Jedi. Names everybody knew, and the ranks of those fortunate enough to meet or serve under those names were considered no less than the elect. Names like Malinogsgii, Kepal Gosho, Rezet Tur-Mukan, and Meetra Surik that men memorized like a roster of saints.

Names like Saul Karath.

And the name Revan had been the most venerable above them all. Always first, always senior.

And that man who claimed a whole world's worth of lives, undefeated across two wars and nothing less than the architect of victory wherever soldiers followed him, who was born into the heart of the Republic first as an invincible hero, then as a demon walked in front of Carth as a man.

Just a man who liked to work on his droids. Just a man who would eye longingly at Bastila when he thought nobody was looking. Just a man with a favorite pair of boots, his own preferences and style of living, a laugh, a voice…

He'd seen Revan put his life on the line for him already at least a dozen times, many more for the rest of the _Ebon Hawk_ crew and an almost infuriating amount for complete strangers who merited it no more than for the fact that they asked or were in trouble. He saw Revan bleed; he saw him pale white and gasping, drifting in and out of torturous sleep in their flophouse apartment on Taris. He saw him cut open, severely wounded, shooting his way out of a Sith base carrying a dying comrade on his back not for any hope of saving his life but to let him die with a little more dignity.

He had seen Revan, Darth Revan, replete and undisturbed beneath the wash of a cold spring rain bearing the coffin of a fellow soldier for the sake of honor, and to assuage a family's grief. He saw Darth Revan present a flag and respect the love of a forlorn young brother. He saw Darth Revan hold a weeping mother and take all the heartbreak of a family into his own heart.

And he saw Darth Revan nearly paint his own brain on the wall with a blaster when he realized who he was.

And with shaking, clammy fingers Carth finally placed the heavy blaster into his holster never to come out again in readiness against Darth Revan, Coriff Bannick, the Revanchist, who or _what_ever that man was. Because he had to trust him. Because they made it this far and Dustil's life depended on it.

That, and it wasn't like he didn't notice Canderous aiming that oversized repeating blaster cannon at _him_ in turn either.

"Let's keep going," Revan groaned. Flashed with pain he shivered, and listened for the squelching grind of sand beneath his soles at the door leading out to the tomb-filled valley. Pain and nostalgia, debts which required payment.

"Is something wrong?" Carth held himself back from touching his shoulder, lest contact wake up something awful and mysteriously more _Revan_.

"No," Revan murmured, eyes downcast. "It's just that I don't _remember_ this place but it feels … I don't like how familiar it feels. Have you ever remembered something you've never seen?"

"You're talking in circles when there's still work to do. I figured traveling with Revan would mean _more_ killing," Canderous guffed.

"More killing to come. I can feel it."

Canderous was the first to step out into the desert sun. In the distance, Sith archaeologists like gray dots meandered slowly under the bullish influence of the heat while the warm desert winds did nothing for them, whistling between naked trees and lifting up sand that would be found inexplicably behind goggles, under scarves and collars, tucked underneath blousing straps and boot socks.

"You good?" Carth asked quietly as the two of them lagged behind the Mandalorian.

"This feels like home," Revan said absently. "More accurately I think… it's like the _road_ home. I wish we'd never come here."

"We have a job to do." Carth tried and failed to mask his worry strung up on the higher tenor his voice assumed.

"But we have a job to do," Revan echoed.

In the desert and in the tombs the infection only continued to spread. Escaped students, a liberated war droid, even the redeemed spirit of Ajunta Pall who in the pantheon of Sith enjoyed a premier seat (who also gave up the location of his holocron, which quickly entered Revan's bag for safekeeping).

Although nobody could point to precisely what, why, or who, the sense of discipline in unity and common purpose that once kept the wrathful energies of the academy under control frayed apart just a little bit more each day, and day by day as it went. Students deserted, others fought, and the guards and instructors confronted an unprecedented spate of rebellion against those few core regulations which had to be enforced for the maintenance of good order.

It was only natural that Uthar Wynn – esteemed warrior and headmaster of the Korriban Sith Academy – observed that it was poor leadership on behalf of his right-hand woman and other senior instructors bringing on the chaos. And quite parcel to that assumption it was Yuthura Ban – aforementioned right-hand woman – who knew in her heart that any organization trembled and raged against its bonds when weakness presided over it. So each plotted against the other, and when they proposed a final examination for their star student in the tomb of Naga Sadow it was a joint decision, although Wynn and Ban each thought that this Coriff Bannick would be on their side in a secret confrontation to come.

Yet they did not understand the nature of the virus growing within the academy until it was a boil: a roiling mass of dead flesh bisecting arteries and imploding vital organs. The academy teetered on the brink of an inability to function at all when Yuthura and Uthar took the man they did not know as Revan out to Naga Sadow's tomb, and each one expected that their victory over the _other_ instructor would expel chaos and restore order as the Sith philosophy decreed – that the strong would rule strongly.

Uthar Wynn did not live to realize the truth or even the true identity of his "student" as he expired on the end of Naga Sadow's blade, wielded by no less than Revan himself. But Yuthura Ban struck out in a rage despite herself when the revelation came, too enraged by the upset to her plans to be rightfully cowed by the sheer disparity in power. Canderous and Carth had been waiting outside the tomb, and they greeted Revan when he emerged but did not expect a milder, surrendered, and only somewhat wounded vice-headmistress in tow.

She was redeemed, or at the very least placed on the hard path towards redemption when her past as a slave was finally contrasted in rhetoric by someone powerful enough to bring her to heel and painfully confront her own absurdity. Like others before her she learned the wrong lessons from a life of suffering and embraced hate as a path to justice. But instead, she would only join the ranks of the Sith turned or wiped out by Revan's hand. She saw how effective Revan was at the other task when he slew Uthar Wynn effortlessly in front of her, and once again when a cabal of students seeking dominion over the academy confronted him by the desert entrance to the academy.

Yuthura Ban did restore order in the academy, after so many personnel and students fled or killed each other in the final lysis the viral phage had triggered. She did so after his and his allies' whirlwind presence departed, and like a steppe buran would only be a memory in the form of desolation.

But the final act before Revan's departure had been in the training rooms, where Carth freed his son from a target cage another unruly student had placed him in while Revan and Canderous held the students there hostage.

Revan's attention was drawn to the men in the other cages: some were alive, most were smoking corpses after a bacchanalian "training" session by a group of unsupervised Sith apprentices. These were Republic soldiers, and if it hadn't been obvious by their regulation haircuts and the defiant stature of those still living, the detailed prisoner manifest in the training control terminal would have told the rest of the story.

Revan's eyes flared with an old hate when by thought he transposed the image of Trask Ulgo on the bodies of the dead and wounded. A fate he had been earmarked for, until Coriff Bannick had intervened. He then considered those bodies as if they were his own men, from Gundark Platoon – they _had_ been his men after all, Revan or not – and affixed the terrified Sith apprentices in his gaze once he had sufficiently stoked the inferno of his own fury.

"Carth, unlock all the cages."

Bodies left unconstrained by the rising durasteel faces of their little cells flopped pitifully out into the sand of the training pit, and those left alive who could move crawled over and took shelter behind their rescuers. The Sith apprentices remained frozen in place at the point of equilibrium between their fantastic, cruel revelry wearing off and the cold spears of terror icing their bowels. Each one looked to the other, then back to Revan, and each other once again – many of them still had their saber arms raised or lightning-throwing hands extended.

"Get in the cages. Get in the cages _now_!" Revan screamed, which awoke the apprentices to action. All of them obeyed; two who had been brave enough to resist earlier were already lifeless piles upon the sand. One of the apprentices stared as if he never believed such a thing could happen, on Korriban, the heart of _Sith_ power being shouted around by the likes of Jedi.

The cages slammed shut and imprisoned their new charges behind a potent weave of cortosis.

"_Jedi do not believe in killing their prisoners, no matter what their crimes_," the whisper of a lost love sheltered by memory infected the venous hate threatening to overtake him.

He gasped and fell to his knees. He had walked the straight path for so long, and had done so with an almost irreverent ease. Jedi goodness and Jedi mercy were second-nature. Why now of all times was he filled with doubt? Was it because he was Revan, and not Coriff? Was it for being in the spiritual heart of the Sith domain? It shouldn't have been that, else the flock of Sith fleeing on their personal ships towards the Jedi Order and a hope for redemption would never have manifested.

Jedi ethics and the focus of Dantooine were so far away now. The _ruins_ of Dantooine, Revan reminded himself, a situation created by wild dogs the likes of which he had now at his complete mercy. Oh, the smiles they had on their faces when _they_ were in charge, when _they _wielded the implements of power. Eager torturers and supplicating prisoners, these dregs. Revan sneered watching them beg for their lives, how they groveled and pleaded for clemency by citing the Jedi principles of mercy.

He looked at one, who banged on his cage with tears pooling in his eyes, who only moments ago cut clean through an unarmed prisoner already seizing on the ground from a lethal Force toxin.

But when they noticed him on the ground unable to execute his will, the Sith turned to each other, and instead of begging they started to _laugh_. "These are the Jedi who will defeat us?" said one. "Malak will have these cowards undone, if they can't even kill their prisoners. Why don't you leave us in here, Jedi, and be on your way? Stop wasting our time," barked another.

Revan looked up at them but he saw not the Sith or the prisoners or even his own men.

_Twenty of them, all in a line. Red and gold uniforms tarnished by the mud and moistened from the melting snow. Blue fingers showed the effects of hard labor out in the storm and blackened necks showed where chains and collars were employed to move men like cattle. Their faces to the ground, each one, and the liquid running from them all in a single viscous stream down a storm drain._

"_Marshal Revan, we have them right here, sir. Should we take them back to division?"_

They were laughing and smiling. Enjoying themselves as if they were back on torture detail. They _knew_ Jedi mercy – so many of them had been Jedi before. How much Revan wanted to turn it back in their faces, to prove them _wrong_. How it terrified him and excited him to think the words "_you will find I am no Jedi_," and if only to say them.

"_Marshal Revan, what should we do, sir?"_

_Eight Mandalorian scouts stared back at the victorious general with a comfortable defiance in their eyes. They had already won _their _battle_. _Whatever came to pass, they would enjoy a heroic death in battle after escaping from one of the Republic's many under-guarded P.O.W. camps. Revan's guards, a mix of hardened soldiers and Jedi – his elite vanguard – looked on expecting their orders. Their faces wore the same conflict they would have never guessed also plagued Revan behind the mask_.

And so an old fire awoke, and over the inferno rose the kind of fire that consumed worlds. His arms shot out like a puppet on a marionette and a past life's fury boiled over the edge. The man laid overtop was cauterized and forever changed.

A brutish lightning storm of the Force emerged from both hands, and the blue light shattered unprotected eyes with its pure brilliance. Carth, Canderous, Dustil, and the surviving Republic prisoners staggered back and looked away while the roar of thunder echoed from wall to wall.

The screams came next, throaty, like daggers raked down a stone wall.

_The Mandalorians writhed on the ground, cooking in their own armor. Skin fused to steel plate and the prolonged screams of terror dissolved surely into whimpers of primal suffering, death rattles, and the thin rasp of mortality for one or two that clung to life after the storm ended, although they would surely pass seconds later._

Revan collapsed again and his barrage ceased for the moment. He clutched his skull and writhed like a snake on the ground as the sensation of a thousand knives pressed into his brain threw him into incomprehensible mental agony. A thousand memories each tried to force their way through the narrow aperture of his mind from whatever arcane oubliette they once wasted away, cast there by the Force and left rotting. Like old tapestries the mold and wear of time rent many holes in the fabric, but the theme of their suffering persisted.

He suppressed the pain by instantiating another regime of suffering on the Sith. He renewed his attack with an uncanny energy at once alien and comforting to him.

One of the Sith – the one who had laughed the most, during the time of joy – wailed in agony quite like none of the others. Forlorn, it was a truly human wail, calling at some higher power to end him.

It was one Revan heard before.

_One clean swipe. Revan's crimson saber sparked against the deck of his command ship overlooking his most recent triumph – only one of many to be questioned by his insurgent subordinate._

_The shriek of that subordinate still echoed in the air, each second evermore replaced by the wet gurgle and moan of a man left jawless. The bubbling hole of his throat expelled what little air it could through the remaining gap, the rest sealed shut by cruel heat._

"_This is the last time you shall question my orders, apprentice."_

"Revan! Stop this! Revan! _Stop, god dammit!_" Carth wrapped his arms around Revan and tried to fling them both back, but the Jedi had rooted himself to the ground for the Force.

The effort was all for naught in the first place. Power receded into his fingers. While the Sith clung to life in their cages, their torturer held back the vomit in his throat, only allowing a thread of bile to leak out onto the sand from his mouth.

It was a righteous disgust when Revan taught Coriff Bannick just how easy it was to fall.


	9. Star Forge

The Star Forge's vast corridors, once teeming with an army constructed from scratch and a legion of Darth Malak's most loyal and stalwart Dark Jedi now resigned itself to idle lifelessness. Its formerly glistening halls now were but a graveyard for countless droids and soldiers – the old van of the Sith army – their finest, thrown aside like rubble in the path of a hurricane. The corpses and refuse of warfare littered the steel decks, and one could not take a step without planting foot through a shattered faceplate, or a sliced-open segment of chest armor, or on the severed limb of a Dark Jedi master, whose deadened eyes were painted with hate in death as much as in life.

This river of carnage lay still in Revan's trail now. With a calculated intent, he stepped ahead of his companions, Jolee and Juhani, onto a metal catwalk leading to the nexus of a secondary command center. Its sole occupant, Malak's new apprentice, kept her back turned to the interlopers as if to spite their very existence within her lord's sanctum.

Revan stopped halfway across the catwalk, daring Bastila Shan to turn and face him. His features displayed a rugged, purposeful expression; the pain and exhaustion that was ripping through his system screamed for every muscle in his body to surrender their struggle, but through the sheer force of single-minded dedication Revan held on, commanding his body to continue at any cost.

Bastila finally turned, quietly unsettled to realize at how the man she once fought with had changed so dramatically. On the outside, he represented the same thing he had to those that fell behind him – a lithic, emotionless scourge on the station's every occupant - but she saw past it. In his eyes, with the accuracy and precision of a predator, she identified his weariness. His clean-shaven face was almost entirely obscured by grime, oil, and blood. His chestnut hair, dripping in spears halfway down his neck, was caked in dark crimson and cemented in sweat. Revan's simple brown robes had received similar wear and tear, exhibiting trauma, cuts, slices, bruises, and burns where a thousand little papercuts finally summoned their blood. Judging from how much punishment Revan must have endured to collect that many visible wounds, Bastila felt confident that all she need to do prevail would be to outlast whatever adrenaline remained in his system.

She raked in a breath, and she snarled, chest rising with the immaculate energies the Star Forge poured into her. The taste of a sweet drug all over raised the hairs on her arms; the sensation of invulnerability fell over her like a sheet of armor sealed to the shape of her body.

Revan, too, took careful note of Bastila. Unlike him, her appearance was flawless. Her hair looked as if it had just been meticulously cleaned, and tied into her short signature pigtails. Her face possessed not a single wound or blemish, but her wry smile and golden eyes spoke volumes about just how thoroughly Malak had broken her. Worry, and pride, and how the Jedi never valued her for who she was, and how she could realize a dimension of might that for most would only live in theory upon paper. She withdrew her double-bladed lightsaber, and it glowed a fearsome crimson instead of her former yellow, the same as it had during their brief duel on Lehon.

"Revan - I knew you'd come for me," the Dark Lord's new apprentice spoke like flowing mercury.

Her lord's former master somberly shook his head, withdrawing but not activating the two blades on his belt. "I'll never give up on you, Bastila. I know you can still be saved."

She found humor in this declaration. Dramatically she covered her mouth when she laughed like a demure servant. "You are wasting your time. I have seen the Jedi for what they are: weak, and afraid," Bastila clenched her free fist, "The Sith are the true masters of the Force. You have forgotten that lesson, Revan."

Bastila raised her chin, looking down on Revan and his partners and passing her judgement, "Now you must pay the price. Here on the Star Forge, the power of the dark side is at its strongest. _This_ time you will not defeat me!" Her cool finally shattered and the spit of venom was followed by trails of lightning sparking out of her nostrils and storming away from her fingers. She was a vessel of energy overflowing and it was obvious her command over the Star Forge's excess was tenuous, animalistic.

Her words threatened to shatter his resolve. Staring into the depths of her eyes, and seeing the rage and pain boiling over, it took all of his remaining willpower to show no weakness or buckle. Memories of her before the episode aboard the _Leviathan_ were fresh and crisp within Revan's mind, wondering how their sacred moment on Tatooine could have been in the same life.

But it wasn't, he thought, not truly, not anymore. That was Coriff Bannick and a Jedi named Bastila Shan. Today it was Revan facing the apprentice of his own rebellious former student. How many times he wished, begging to the Force, that he could have that old life back.

But life in an illusion was no life at all. What he had was life _now_, and for all he labored against the rope of fate his was already told long ago. But Bastila… the Jedi Bastila Shan…

His fingers flicked over the activators and his blades hummed to life. Some fates were not yet written.

In the blink of an eye, Bastila channeled the energy of the Star Forge emanating from her command nexus and locked Jolee and Juhani into an impermeable stasis. She flew into action, bridging the distance between her and Revan with a mighty leap and bringing her crimson double-blade down on his green and blue single blades as she landed.

Revan was immediately on the defensive. Bastila's raw fury and speed clashed with the former Sith master's wavering strength, driving him back inch by inch with every clash of their weapons. The fallen Jedi cut a wide sweep at neck level, and Revan only barely ducked and rolled back in time to avoid decapitation. From a crouching position, he prepared to charge forward with a renewed attack and a mighty Force push, but he was caught off-guard by a terrifying maelstrom of lightning emanating from Bastila's fingertips, more fury at the rotten heart of an undead empire called up like the contortion of a lich. Energy from the Star Forge visibly flowed into her form in black-mucked beams of light. Blades of lightning bracketed her from all sides – this was the heart of the station itself supplying her maelstrom.

Again, Revan just barely summoned up a block to deflect her attack, but even with all of the power he could muster, Bastila's augmented wrath fueled by the unfiltered malevolence of the Star Forge rapidly wore at his barrier. In seconds, the redeemed Dark Lord of the Sith was blasted back, straight into the sealed blast door behind them. Smoke rose from his worn flesh, which lay unmoving save for brief jolts from the terrible electric shock he endured.

In that moment, Bastila sheathed her lightsaber and put her hands on her hips triumphantly. "The strong shall always conquer the weak, Revan. It is a shame that you have so easily cast aside this lesson."

Pain. The purest, most biting, and most soul-crushing pain filled to capacity every last nerve of Revan's body. Each muscle jolted from the outrageous charge coursing through his system, briefly ceasing his control over his own motion. He managed to turn his head, raising his cheek off of the cold steel deck, and saw Bastila glower at him from across the chamber like a brooding angel of death.

No. It couldn't end like this. There was no way he could abandon her. Surrender and death were not options, only success would be an acceptable outcome. Fighting back the typhoons of pain tearing across his nerves, Revan fought to regain control of his body.

She feigned a yawn, preparing to resume her meditation, but was interrupted by a bout of stirring from Revan's body. "What, ready for _more_? I'd be more than happy to oblige!" Just as she unsheathed her dual blade, Revan rose from his heap and covered the significant distance between them in a dead sprint, experiencing a tremendous second wind.

Bastila successfully deflected Revan's first attack, but she was forced to take a step back. Feeling weakened from the exertion of blasting him with lightning, she ceased fighting for a brief moment and allowed the Star Forge to replenish her with its vast reservoirs of dark energy. The tendrils of raw power manifest crashed into her body, raising her off of the deck as each cell in her body coursed with rippling new might.

"I see now why Malak followed you. Even though you are a shell of your former self, you are a formidable opponent. I can't even _imagine _the power you must have wielded when you were the Dark Lord. You were a fool to give it up and follow the light." Bastila displayed obvious surprise and admiration for his recovery, albeit still with a twinge of spite and condescension.

Every moment Bastila tarried, Revan felt his faculties slowly return. Despite a long series of grueling battles leading up to the command deck and the punishing tide of the current duel, he felt newfound reserves of energy coursing through him. It was as if the Force itself was arming him to fight on. While Malak's apprentice gorged herself on the decaying, unsubstantial raw strength of the Star Forge, Revan's body gradually recharged with a more refined vigor. A longer-lasting and deeper energy.

"The Dark side has made me stronger than I ever was before! I have a mastery of the Force greater than all but the most powerful Jedi masters," Bastila raised both of her arms and released a torrent of lightning into the air above them, "As Malak teaches me the greatest secrets of the Sith, I will unlock more of my potential. Eventually, there will be no limit to what I can accomplish with the Force!"

"Malak will kill you before he ever lets you become that powerful."

"Have you forgotten the ways of the Sith already, Revan? Eventually I will challenge my Master. If I am worthy, he will die by my hand and I will be the new Sith Master. Then, I will take on my own apprentice and the cycle will begin is the way of the Sith, it is how we assure our leaders are the strongest and most worthy!"

Such serene confidence and belief in those words shook Revan to the core. Had she truly fallen past the point of redemption? "And you would tell me about the Sith? You forget who you're talking to. You're dooming yourself to an endless cycle of death and betrayal."

"Pray tell, how much of that do you _remember, _Revan?" Bastila snapped cholerously. His silence was the answer. "You are nothing more than a shadow cast on the ground by your old legend. Now _I_ will be the star which fills that sky. My master stole the opportunity to kill you the _first_ time but now… now I have my chance again."

"Your mission was to capture-"

"_My mission was to kill you!_" Bastila screamed with the Force, throwing Revan nearly to the deck had he not braced himself and laid up his sabers to a strong guard. "And instead of winning glory I won the distinct honor of babysitting your shattered mind, for a weak Republic and a weak Jedi Order. No, no, not _this_ time…" Bastila tightened her gloves with sharp, deliberate motion.

"No, Revan. It is _you_ who are doomed." Revan recoiled in his mind at her stalwart declaration, but nonetheless charged forth to meet her next attack.

There was no visible difference in the ferocity and speed of Bastila's next attack and her first unrelenting barrage. She brought her blade to bear against the former Dark Lord in every possible way, probing him for any way past his beleaguered defenses. Her attacks were inspired further by a certain slowness in Revan's parries and counterattacks. Even if it was at a meager rate, she could see his energy being ground away by attrition, whereas she neither slowed nor faltered.

To Jolee and Juhani, relegated to silent, tense observation from across the chamber, Revan also seemed sluggish. However, this was not out of exhaustion alone. Behind the chaos of their duel, Revan's every action carried a special precision. No matter how quickly Bastila's cuts and slashes came, each attempt was unceremoniously rebuffed. The desperation in his movements had been abandoned, as if he intended to end the fight by other means.

Bastila launched a brilliant, flourishing maelstrom of strikes against Revan's defenses, and took the opportunity to quickly step back and pause. She drew a sadistic satisfaction from the apparent degradation of her opponent's abilities.

"You are growing weary, I can sense it! Your strength falters, the light side is failing you while the power of the Star Forge re-energizes me! Soon this will all be over!" Malak's apprentice did not expect Revan to be as unfazed by the situation as he was, and her newfound dissatisfaction with the resoluteness of her opponent became obviously evident in her expression, adopting a poisonous snarl and furrowing her brows.

Revan felt his inner resolve returning to him. Something inside of her was breaking, wavering. The dark stranglehold over her was not as unshakeable as it first appeared. "I have not faltered, Bastila. You have been misled. This power isn't just flooding into you," he batted away yet another perfect strike which should have ended him by all rights, "it's flooding _over_ you. You're blinded by it."

"The Dark side will always triumph over the light! Malak has assured me of victory! You can't defeat me here on the Star Forge! YOU CAN'T!" All of Bastila's pent up rage and frustration bubbled to the surface, mixing with the energies of the Star Forge to propel her forward in one last grand attempt to drive her stalwart opponent into the ground.

She rocketed forward, while the blasts of energy coursing into her from the Star Forge propelled her even further, slamming blade down upon blade in a final relentless strike. Unseen savagery ripped over her face when it could be seen behind the flashes and sparks of their flurrying weapons. He had telegraphed her attack as soon as she had reared to launch. Bastila's once impeccable facade was showing cracks. She was getting sloppy.

Revan rejected blow after blow as each attack came with more furious and reckless abandon, allowing his opponent to exhaust herself with each failed attempt at shattering his dug-in defense. Revan lunged and sliced at eye-level, taking care that Bastila would still be able to dodge it even with her blindly offensive furor dragging down her performance.

Bastila ducked and sprung up, raising her blade in mid-air to slice down on Revan and end the fight once and for all. She had taken the bait.

It was over.

Revan raised his arm and summoned all of his power behind a mighty push that slammed into Bastila's core, throwing her far back into the command nexus with a sickening crunch and slam of flesh on metal. Her deactivated lightsaber rolled away and off the platform, leaving her completely defenseless. As her victorious opponent approached, she forced herself to rise and face him, clutching her pained side, sure to have suffered at least a few ribs as casualties.

"No… This is not possible! You have rejected the dark side, you are a weak and pathetic servant of the light! How can you still stand against me? Why can't I defeat you?" Bastila despaired at her failure, and the fear of a painful death at the hands of the one who had so crushingly swept her aside and drained her of the will to carry on the fight any longer.

"Power is a false and fickle god. It leaves you when you need it most. It is lonely, and _pathetic, _and all it can ever fulfill is a hollow addiction." Revan walked towards her extremely slowly, extremely quietly. The gentle pulsing of cooling fans below kicked up the tail of his robes and his silhouette was caught in the glow of holomap lights. And yet around them the world froze; it felt out of breath, gravid, anticipating the birth of its own truth. Bastila retreated back and almost fell upon the floor projector. Throbbing pain in her ribcage hunched her over like an old crone and suddenly she was so small.

"Now you see the dark side is not stronger than the light." Revan maintained his grim expression, but it pained him far greater than any blow Bastila could've physically inflicted to hear her full of such despair and hopelessness. Defeating her was the only path to saving her, but that didn't make the process any less torturous.

Her eyes fell as she hissed in pain. "Yes, I see you speak the truth. I am no match for you. Please, for the sake of what we once shared," Revan's eyes lit up, "do not make me suffer. End my life quickly. There is no other way," she croaked.

His expression was soon drained of the faint hope it once had seconds before at Bastila's request. He could feel his heart plummet through his gut. As he spoke, his determined expression faltered, exposing his despair and distress at her words. "I could never kill you, Bastila." It was a true statement rife in its finality, one that demarcated the only two ways this could end.

"What other choice do you have? I have fallen to the dark side, I am the apprentice to the Dark Lord himself. You cannot let me live."

"You can reject the dark side, Bastila. Return to the light."

Bastila grimly shook her head. "No… I'm not strong enough. There is too much anger inside me now. Too much hatred and fear. I can no longer find peace in the Force."

Revan did not reply. Instead, he took a step forward, extinguishing his blades. He returned one to his belt, and the other he placed into his vanquished opponent's hands. Bastila squinted and raised a brow in abject puzzlement, and her mouth hung open slightly in surprise as Revan guided the unlit hilt into his gut. The way he walked her hand with the blade into his abdomen had a dissonant quality of intimacy to it. Close enough that each could feel the other's warm breath drift over their skin. Fingers laced with fingers, and nowhere to escape the cruel truth of eye contact. He looked down at her and wondered if he had ever been so fully close to someone.

"If that's true, Bastila, then end me now." A certain calmness pervaded his tone, in stark contrast to his firm adamancy during their duel. Whatever way out he had synthesized in his mind, it was apparent that any outcome would bring him an acceptable degree of peace. A sincere request.

"You wish for me to strike you down, when you have already won? I will not let you _mock _me!"

"No, Bastila. If you are truly a creature of the dark now, I ask for you to strike me down. I fell in _love _with Bastila Shan, the confident, beautiful, and kind-hearted Jedi who fought with me to bring down Malak and the Sith, and that's the woman I've been fighting for ever since the _Leviathan_."

Bastila's eyes grew wide. Revan looked up and stared sadly into them, searching for any hint of the person trapped inside the cage of darkness Malak and the Star Forge had constructed within her.

"If the woman I love is truly dead, then I will die here with her." Revan stated simply, as if declaring an inconsequential truth in life. "It would be a privilege."

"You… you can't…"

"Do you understand how I feel for you? Since Tatooine you have had me."

Bastila gently pressed the unlit blade deeper, her thumb tracing the switch guard. A single flick of its ignition would mean total victory for the Sith. The Republic's last hope for salvation against the encroaching hordes of glistening armor and red sabers on Coruscant would be extinguished forever. The history of the galaxy would be forever changed in one fell swoop.

It would be so easy. Total victory was mere inches away. But, in spite of all that, the burning voice of the darkness within Bastila, screaming for her to liquidate the sole threat to Malak's rule, was stifled by the cascade of emotions flooding every darkened nook and cranny of her heart. In Revan's eyes and through their bond, Bastila was overwhelmed by the uncompromising love and warmth flooding into her, washing away the demon which demanded so much blood.

Revan's lips curled into a slight smile as he felt the lightsaber recede from his abdomen and drop, clattering on the metal lattice floor. He released a breath he didn't know he was holding, looking Bastila in the eyes with tenderness.

"You are brave… and some would say foolish. But you are also right. The dark side has not wholly consumed me. I cannot raise my blade against you." Bastila displayed a wan smile, satisfied with her decision. "You will go on to defeat Malak, of this I have little doubt. You will have gone from being the Sith Lord, himself, to the savior of our galaxy."

There was a pregnant pause before Bastila continued, as she collected herself for what she was about to say.

"And… and you said you loved me. It may not be the best time to say it, but… I love you too, with all my heart"

Almost immediately after the confession left her mouth, Revan wrapped his sore arms tightly around her wounded body, just careful enough to avoid pressing on the manifold injuries he had inflicted. He pressed her smaller form against his own, savoring the elation of having his single ultimate desire united with him at last, snug against his chest, just satisfied to feel _her _under worn Sith robes.

Bastila's eyes widened in shock as his lips crashed against hers, locking them in a passionate kiss. She let her eyes flutter shut and slowly maneuvered her arms around the former Dark Lord's neck. Frozen in time, in their loving embrace, the two redeemed Jedi let the world around them fall away. Both of them pulled themselves closer together, as if leaving any empty space between their bodies would allow the universe to separate them once more. Only for lack of oxygen did the two part, simply to bring their lips together once more, both Revan and Bastila eager to resume their exchange of passion. Every last thought or feeling of affection became pure and clear in their bond, which so amplified their experience that the mere thought of pulling apart produced a faint stabbing pain in their chests.

Eventually, they broke their second kiss and Revan rested his head on Bastila's shoulder, refusing to loosen their embrace even the smallest amount.

"Bastila… Bastila… oh, Bastila..." Revan stroked her hair and muttered her name on end, "You aren't afraid to love anymore?"

Bastila pulled back just enough so that the two of them were able to look each other in the eye. "After this? No, nothing could make me feel safer than to be loved by you." Revan stroked the side of her face and sighed, still grinning. The inferno that had blazed in Revan's heart for the last several weeks, longing and desperation its fuel, was finally quenched. In its place rose a new flame, softer and warmer, drawing from a fierce and immense instinctive urge to never again lose this foothold they had toiled for, against all the repressions and forces which held them apart. Bastila… _his _Bastila. Against a backdrop of a galaxy at war, in love he had finally found his own fiefdom of peace. But the job was not yet finished. Both Revan and Bastila knew it, but neither wished to be the first to admit it.

"You should go. Malak awaits. This isn't over yet… for any of us. I should stay here, though. If we face Malak I am afraid his dark presence will overwhelm me. It would not be wise to expose myself to such temptation." Bastila was the first to break, and with a heavy heart she expressed the cruel reality of the moment.

Revan let his hands rest on Bastila's shoulders as he took a few steps back. "I want you by my side when Malak is finally defeated. We'll end this war together."

"I'm sorry, but the risk is too great. I am not wholly free of the dark side's shadow. Not yet. But you are more than a match for Malak. I understand that now," Bastila's expression softened as she sighed, noting her love's forlorn reaction, even with reluctant agreement, "I must stay here and aid the Republic fleet to destroy this station. Malak is your fight."

The former Sith smiled a bittersweet smile, and cast his gaze downward. "Of course, Bastila. Of course…" Revan traced the source of the greatest and final font of dark energy on the station past a mighty blast door, staring through them at his final destiny. "I will return victorious. For the Republic, and for _us_. Besides… Malak can't be so tough," Revan winked. He stepped towards the unlocked doors, looking over his shoulder one final time as Bastila prepared to enter a meditative state on the deck.

"I love you, Bastila."

"Be safe, my love. May the Force be with you."

It was then that Revan understood his victory was inevitable.

Seconds became minutes as quickly as minutes began to feel like hours and days when in the truest heat of battle meditation. Each round of gunfire dispatching a Sith cruiser to its ultimate fate felt like a surge of stimulant rushing through her blood. Every Sith casualty stoked the flame of her Force energy sustaining the crucial power, and every Republic casualty starved it ever so slightly of its precious fortitude. But as Bastila fell deeper and deeper into her trance, intertwining what strength in the Force remained after so much exertion with every tendril and tide of the battle which so furiously raged on around the station, the flame grew to demand more battle, more chaos. Battle Meditation, for all its professed significance as a miracle of the Force, remained immensely difficult to wield, let alone control.

In the teeming mass of warfare she felt one dear soul approach its destiny. She spared focus from the larger battle and empowered him through the invisible hand of her inborn ability. If she could not walk with him into the jaws of fate she could hold his hand, like this, from a distance.

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Over the din of the machine hall rumbled the distant noise of war. The Star Forge deflected away much of its parent star's blistering corona – heat resistance was an outsized component of the station's energy budget – yet enough ejected gas and plasma lingered to convey sounds of turbolasers, warships crushed, snapped at the keel by mines and missiles, and the high-pitched whine of fighter engines and the chatter of their laser cannons.

Revan felt the presence even before he entered yet no other path showed itself. Any interim period spent searching for a hidden duct or alternative entrance might have been too long, leaving Malak too much time to prepare his counter-strike, and Revan had come too far to lose it all for want of a shortcut. He stood in the darkness, only illuminated by the faint heat of machines and occasional electrical fire from overloaded circuits.

Then the overheads came on, and section by section cast their beams and revealed an army. From shooting platforms, behind shield barriers and sandbags, arrayed together in insurmountable legion was a sea of the enemy. Red-clad shock troops and their officers, war droids, and what had to have been the full assembly of every last Dark Jedi remaining on the Star Forge. Revan held up a guard and prepared to receive fire.

His limbs suffered as they must under yet another impeachable demand, and he crouched low, ready to leap into the fray and overwhelm the defense with a display of violence that might shock their morale, their will, just long enough to get him from one side of the machine hall to the other. After Malak was dead… well, that would be another problem.

But coiled like a spring his plan was aborted, and all eyes including Revan's flew to the ceiling and the catwalks when the pulverizing rain of blasterfire came down. From the rafters and passageways, the pools of shadow and hidden cover they emerged.

Hundreds of them – instinct took control and he recognized the markings, uniforms, and the tactics in an instant. He felt naked without a blaster rifle and embarrassed that it was not there when he automatically reached for it on a strap around his shoulders where it always used to be.

No blaster fire arrived on his blades to be deflected. Was this not the enemy? They were the famed Dark Assassins who were a permanent fixture in every Republic mind. They were arbiters of fear and since the inauguration of hostilities with the great raids on the Core Worlds and the rim fortresses, where in the most defended zones their short swords, sabers, and blaster rifles drilled into their targets without fail. It was rumored that every mission assigned to them for that first terrible day had been accomplished, yet it was outside anyone in the Republic to know, for the extremely small handful that had been cornered bit down on suicide pills quite expeditiously when the moment of captivity had drawn near.

On day two of the war, the Naval Commandos were unofficially designated as the counter-force to Dark Assassin terror. Not only would they execute the same missions against Sith targets, they would harden friendly assets against their offensives.

Revan, or _Coriff_ like all the others in his esteemed corps trained madly for the appointed time they would confront the cream of the Sith, their elite of the elite. But after the "death" of Revan the employment of Dark Assassins by the Sith Empire abruptly stopped. On the day of that fateful raid on Revan's flagship there had been two Dark Assassin operations, the next day only one – conducted by a sleeper agent who was in all likelihood already committed and impossible to recall – after that, no more.

Revan's gut response trained into him over the course of a year expected new battle, perhaps impossible battle with an enemy which had always existed on the fringes of imagination, one against which no true preparations could ever be made. Yet they came down with repulsor-packs glowing, and on zip lines, and the Dark Jedi among them simply leapt with the Force. They chewed into Malak's defense and the bellicose chaos absorbed their attention as scores of men and droids were cut down every second. Yet the Dark Assassins were clearly outnumbered and suffering their own losses, even as their officers, identified by their gray folded caps in lieu of the quintessential Sith hood and mask gathered them into vicious fighting groups that melted the enemy before them. Many fell on both sides, and it was unclear who would eventually have the advantage.

He'd barely recovered from the shock when a Falleen dropped in front of him. Full, dark eyes stared at Revan and he spoke with the strained whisper of a forgotten voice.

"My Lord, the path is clear. Malak is _your _ fight. We will hold them as long as we can," he said to Revan as if witnessing the sun.

Another set of lost memories to find one day, and more answers. But neither man had time for that indulgence. The Falleen bowed deeply and withdrew his two weapons – one, a saber tanto of brilliant orange, and the other an obsidian-colored extendable baton over which a film of energy shimmered under the light, like a strange adaptation of the Force pike.

"Permit me to escort you, Lord. Our window is small."

The memory of a recent life ablated its suspicion in favor of a subterranean instinct which commanded Revan to follow this man, a man who he could only suspect had been a faithful follower of his _own_ long ago.

They weaved like dancers through the ballet of death. In this way the Falleen amazed Revan, how he moved as if only half-touching the ground, feeling the shifts of death around them before they happened, careening blade and baton against flesh only as side effects of his sublime motions. However Revan, too, amazed himself, for he danced in much the same way and in a little moment of forgetfulness reveled in it – it was a glorious sensation remembering these old steps which, second-nature even now, he must have been an esteemed master of long ago.

The Falleen Dark Assassin bowed one final time as he left his charge by the penultimate destination: the elevator to the observation deck. And like a dancer, he melted away into the sea of bodies to finish his part.

Now nothing stood in front of him, and Revan stepped forth into his destiny.

Two men met, and the past and future merged together in their finality. And nobody would ever know it, but for the one who lived.


	10. Tremor

One peculiar side-effect of Battle Meditation was the practitioner's inability to maintain even the most basic passive mental blocks; any observing Jedi or Sith could opt to enter their mind and find the gates to the practitioner's most vulnerable thoughts and feelings wide open at any time. Juhani and Jolee were well aware of this fact. Freed from their imprisonment, they gently probed Malak's former apprentice for any duplicity in her redemption. To their mutual relief and satisfaction, her every word was genuine.

But how Revan had so quickly reached Bastila to save her from the dark was an object of immediate curiosity. Malak's hold over her was certainly tenuous with its shaky foundation and lack of maturity, but even the freshest of Malak's converts captured by Republic forces took many days to coax out of their cornered stance, the harsh defiance and violent outbursts which often necessitated the use of Force suppression equipment.

"Revan and Bastila spoke of love, one which I felt at the end of their encounter, but never before." Juhani plainly stated, looking to Jolee for any insight on this revelation.

"We talked about love a handful of times during our journey. Revan and I, that is. I had a feeling something was on between those stupid kids, but it seems they were too sneaky for us to notice," The old man stroked the furs of his carefully-managed beard in thought, "Bastila was, at least. Revan wouldn't hide romantic feelings if it were up to him alone. I think she was embarrassed by it. And who could blame her, the poor girl. I think Darth Revan is high on the list of worst guys to bring home to your parents."

"Or the Jedi order," Juhani purr-laughed.

"She was humiliated." Jolee emphasized. "The Jedi Order's new star pupil ever since their _last_ one came back with a red lightsaber, and she decides to fall in _love_ with him? Now add that with some Jedi prescribed self-loathing…"

The Cathar shook her head. "They are good Jedi. _Both _of them are. Whatever lies in the past cannot change that the Republic would surely fall without them both." She glanced at Jolee when she heard him snort.

"Come now, you're sharper than that, Juhani. Neither of them want to be good Jedi, and if they haven't figured that out yet, they'll be damn sure of it when the dust from this war settles."

The battle was soon felt to be at a close by all those left alive on the Star Forge. Its impending demise was informed through a series of skull-rattling shockwaves emanating from the upper decks; the Republic fleet had managed to destroy the vast factory's orbital stabilizers. In minutes, it would plunge into the star it fed off of for millennia on end, releasing it from its unseen, undetected slavery to darkness. Juhani bolted to Bastila's side, shaking her out of her trance.

"It's done. We must leave, lest we die here." She pulled Bastila up by the arm, but the redeemed Jedi did not budge once standing.

"I feel him. He's close, Juhani. We just have to wait."

The Cathar tensed, and her face shifted uncomfortably, but Bastila's insistent declaration could by no means be contested. For the man that had risked everything for his crew and the Republic, they could surely risk their lives for him.

Revan soon emerged from the observation deck, passing through the now-malfunctioning security doors. He favored his right leg, occasionally taking advantage of the walls to stay on his feet. His right arm traced the bulkhead for balance, while his left clutched at his chest, the arm of his robe visibly saturated with blood.

"He's dead," Revan growled, "him and all the troops he had in reserve..." A rough bout of coughing interrupted him. Blood was mixed with saliva, and his convulsions nearly brought him to his knees. "Lots of droids. We need to… need to…"

Bastila's jaw swung open in horror. She sprinted to his side moments after he collapsed into unconsciousness, briskly inspecting each and every wound and assessing his general health. Wordlessly, she lifted his limp body with the Force.

"Go. _Go_. Clear a path ahead." Bastila ordered succinctly, desperation cascading over each word. Sweat soon flooded her brow. Her heart threatened to leap from her chest, as icy spears of horror thrust into every corner of her mind. While Jolee and Juhani cleared the way ahead, shoving aside debris and eliminating any Sith stragglers, Bastila's attention remained entirely focused on Revan's terribly wounded visage. Even before their duel, he bore the appearance of a man who had truly been through hell. Further exhausted and wounded after fighting her, he just barely survived against Malak at his peak strength, supported by Force knows how many men and machines left in the heart of the forge itself.

Wounds covered the entirety of his body, in the form of deep cuts, burns, and ugly bruises. Such wounds would slay any man – great Jedi or no.

Even with this knowledge, the dirtiest and most repulsive fear asserted itself in the pit of her stomach. The fear that her love would be lost, so soon after it was realized.

Bastila cast away loose hazel strands from her face in panic. While following Jolee and Juhani back to the _Ebon Hawk_, she poured every scrap of energy she had left into Revan's wounds. Some minor cuts and bruises were eliminated, but the gravest of all his injuries remained beyond her current faculties to remedy. Not one but a web like scatter of cuts and burns, from sword and saber and blaster across his torso, sanitized only by the salt of a thick sheen of sweat. Blood had stopped oozing from the wounds, but so much had been lost already...

"Bastila, quick! Get on board, get him to the sick bay!" Carth hollered from the boarding ramp of their ship, drawing Bastila from her fearful stupor. Jolee and Juhani scampered ahead of her, dodging collapsing hull durasteel and gesturing for her to follow.

The redeemed Jedi trundled up the ramp as the crushing weight of exhaustion finally levied upon her shoulders, slowing each step and weakening her grip on Revan's body with the Force. Jolee promptly took over and hauled Revan to the sick bay. The woman collapsed on the cold metal deck just as the door behind her began to seal. Exhaustion. Nothing but pure exhaustion on an unparalleled scale. Bastila blinked once, then twice, and drifted to sleep before she could open her eyes a third time.

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She awoke in her bunk. No longer did she wear the gray robes of a Sith apprentice. Someone must've changed her into her old Jedi set while she was asleep. They had also washed and treated most of her injuries, and considering how mild her discomfort was she figured painkillers had been involved. Must have been Juhani. _Hopefully_ it was Juhani. Naturally, Canderous would have been the worst alternative candidate of them all of them all. She'd have to ask later. Lightning bolts of pain rode the contours of her skin to molest every nerve in her body.

"_Nope, no painkillers_."

Hissing, she called upon the Force to numb the pain, at least for a while. Not knowing their location, nor the time or situation, she rolled out of the bunk.

It must've been at least half an hour she spent in the refresher, washing away the blood, sweat, and the general musk of exhausting battle. She sorted her hair into their twin braids and donned a fresher set of Jedi robes, as the clothes she'd slept in now reeked as badly as she had when first stumbling aboard.

She stood in the hatch of the sick bay. At least a third of Revan's body was encased in kolto-soaked bandages. A mask aided his breathing, which was executed laboriously with a sick wheeze, in and out. His eyes were clamped shut in a deep sleep, and quite likely a painful one. How he suffered, and how she could not relieve it. However many hours of sleep she had seized were only just enough to keep her on her feet; her strength to heal at the moment was laughably impotent.

"Hey." Carth greeted her simply, joining her in observing the former Dark Lord. "Trust me, looking will just stress you out more. Come on, let's talk. There's something you ought to know about." The Republic pilot turned on his heels and walked off towards the cockpit. Bastila followed suit, albeit slowly.

Carth allowed himself to sink into the pilot's seat, which was never occupied by anyone but himself. Bastila sat down rather uncomfortably in the co-pilot's seat, resting at the edge with her hands folded on her knees.

"He cares about you, you know." Carth stated simply. In any normal situation, Bastila would've laughed at the idea that she would be in the dark about Revan's feelings, but in this case she could bring herself to do little more than nod meekly.

"He loves me. That's how he saved me, Carth. It's how he saved us all."

"It's not just that. I mean, yeah, that's _huge_ and we can tell he's nuts about you, but there's a bit _more_ to it."

This piqued Bastila's interest. Her eyes rose ever so slightly, and her back stiffened. "How do you mean?"

"Back when you first got captured, you heard him pounding on the security doors. We _all_ heard him yell. But even after we fled the _Leviathan_, it was obvious that something in him had… changed." Outside the cockpit, the _Ebon Hawk_ was surrounded by the bulk of the Republic fleet, with its main force of cruisers dispatching streams of shuttles to the surface of Lehon. "He didn't talk anymore. Of course, for damn sure he'd change after learning that Coriff Bannick wasn't real and that he was actually the Dark Lord, but... but this was different."

Bastila shook her head in disappointment. Faint tones of regret stained her words. "I would be shocked if it didn't kill him on the inside. He has every right to hate us."

"But he didn't _hate_ us. He didn't _die_ inside. All he did was he just… it was almost like the old soldier in him came back – not Revan, but the Coriff from the _Endar Spire_. It was mission this, and mission that… and getting _you_ back. When we ended up going to Korriban after searching the ruins on Dantooine, he told us that the plan was the find the last map so that we could go out and save you. Not the Republic and every last man, woman, and child in it. _You_."

Bastila opened her mouth but the silence echoed.

"I had my suspicions that something went on between you two, and I figure most of the crew did, too. This was a surprise, though." Carth gazed wistfully at the fleet. He wrung his hands, taking his time to pick the right words. "He never blamed you. Never was angry. He was angry at _Malak_ for capturing you and angry at _himself_ for letting it happen. And not a damn thing in the whole galaxy could stop him from finding you, Bastila. Nothing else mattered. It was… quite a sight to see."

"For the longest time I held him at bay. I couldn't… feel for the Dark Lord. He was an evil man at heart. I felt evil for even considering him."

"We were all wrong about him in our own ways, Bastila," he peered over at her from his side of the cockpit. "I… I trust him now. I mean, after all he's gone through for us. Hell, half the reason I let Malak's former apprentice on board is because I trust that Malak's former _master _got through to her."

Bastila bit her lip and recoiled at Carth's reminder.

"If you ask me though, the Jedi Order has the most to answer for. The only reason any of us are still here is because Darth Revan happened to have a change of heart and who _knows_ how likely that was to go wrong, huh?"

Bastila shifted uncomfortably. "It was an impossible situation. As much as I feel awful about what we did to him, I can't help but think that giving him those false memories was the only option. We were losing the war Carth, with or without Revan at its head the Sith Empire was going to roll over us by sheer force of numbers alone if that's what it came down to. We could plan the perfect operation, catch an entire fleet in our trap and wipe them out. And then two more battlegroups of equal size would show up somewhere else…"

"Far be it from me to question the Jedi Order's ahh, _infinite_ wisdom," Carth raised his hands in mock surrender, "but I don't like how duplicitous they can be. At least they could've told the military, so we could keep a closer eye on him. I know how hopeless the war was, hell I didn't even expect us to win most days, after Foerost and especially after Telos," the name of his homeworld sailed away and cut a silence with its prow.

Carth stared beyond the cockpit, where every ship the Republic Navy could spare formed up in their orbital anchorages. The _Hawk_ floated at impulse speed underneath the lumbering ancient battleships of the 18th Line Ship Brigade, the ones who fell upon the bulwark of the Star Forge's outer defensive guns and reduced its shields with withering barrages of naval gunfire. The _Hammerhead_-class light cruisers exploited the gap and executed the beast at the same time Malak himself was killed.

Tugs and shuttles fluttered around the battleships like birds lifted in thermals between vast mountain ranges. Exposed sections of hull sheared apart by enemy fire continued to glow hot and nobody seemed concerned to cover them up and extinguish, as if the great metal beasts were too large to register the pain. A wolfpack of destroyers emerged out of hyperspace nearby from a mission to harangue enemy stragglers; a squadron of fighters in a holding pattern scrambled out of their path like a school of prey fish, until the destroyers' reversing engines brought them to a stop and calm was restored.

She raised a brow. "And you think you could have stopped Revan if everything went the wrong way? Perhaps if we took aboard a few more crew, maybe a battalion of riot police?"

Carth shook his head. "You got me there." He stared out of the front viewport and absently rubbed his chin. "After seeing him on Korriban, Bastila… I don't think we could've stopped him with an army. I'm just glad he's on our side."

"Yes…" Bastila smiled. "I don't think he ever strayed from the path, since I first saw him on Taris."

Carth grunted in agreement, and in silence they recounted the twists and turns of their journey. How "Coriff" had sliced through every Dark Jedi in their path. His training on Dantooine had awakened his talents for swordsmanship, and his command of the Force had matured at a dizzying rate.

The Council's backup plan was for Bastila to incapacitate Revan if it became necessary – and kill him if there was no other option. And how soon it became obvious just how ridiculous this notion was; maybe Tatooine? Perhaps even by the time his training on Dantooine had ended. Every day, in the back of her mind, the words of Master Vrook had echoed in her mind.

"_If Revan re-awakens he must be eliminated for good. We're barely surviving against Malak's Sith, and I fear it is all too likely that if Revan led them again we would be nothing more than grass before the scythe," _Bastila had shuddered when these words had been spoken to her in hushed tones at a closed meeting, "_you must be ready to strike, and to kill without mercy if there is _any_ indication of Revan's return_."

Part of her had felt obligated to report how quickly his powers were returning. Part of her wanted to request a whole detachment of masters to accompany them on their mission so that they could fall upon Coriff Bannick and cut him down if his true self ever rose to the surface.

But in her heart she realized this absurdity, just as Carth did. Even if all the great masters of the Jedi Council could be stuffed aboard the _Ebon Hawk_ without drawing attention to the mission, she held no confidence they could hold back an awakened Revan. She had seen him fight – both as the ghost of Lord Revan in Coriff, and years ago on the command bridge of his old flagship where she and the Republic had sprung their fateful trap.

And deep in her heart, she feared one thing above all else: that if she warned the Jedi of his growing power, they would see her as incompetent and send her away, never to be alongside him again.

But only one of those concerns now remained; her chances of achieving early masterhood seemingly dashed against the rocks by her short tenure as the apprentice of Darth Malak himself. Only one of those desperate wants continued to burn.

Bastila rose from her seat and stalked out for the sick bay. "I'm going to be there when he wakes up, and then we'll never be apart again."

In how Revan and Bastila acted and felt, so honestly and purely and unable to hide themselves, it forced a smirk to Carth's face. He hailed the RNS _Illustrious_, patiently awaiting his comms packet to rise to the top of the queue.

"Good evening _Illustrious_ control, this is Lieutenant Onasi hailing for Admiral Dodonna. How's the traffic control life treating you?"

"_Good to hear you made it out alright sir. We've got our hands full but it's a good problem to have, that means almost everyone is coming home safe. Admiral Dodonna has been expecting word for some time. Patching you through to her comms._"

A short pause.

"_Admiral Dodonna to Ebon Hawk. I trust you're all in good shape_?"

Carth sank into the worn leather of his seat. "Lieutenant Carth Onasi speaking, ma'am. All present and accounted for. I'm calling this one a huge win for the good guys."

"_War heroes get a free pass on formalities, Carth. I hope you aren't overly fond of being called Lieutenant, you can probably guess there's a promotion or four in your future._"

The Republic pilot smirked and flipped a bank of switches on his dashboard. "Now don't get my hopes up for nothing, Admiral. I think might've put a safety violation on my record with how close our escape was from the Star Forge. Not sure what the over-under is on them sending me back to flight school for a remedial!"

"_You and me both, Onasi. That withdrawal was too close for comfort. You just get yourself into the landing pattern so we can celebrate our victory on Lehon properly or I'll have you scrubbing refreshers._"

"We'll be there soon, Admiral. I just have to ask, how much weight do you think you hold with the Jedi Council nowadays?"

"_Well Carth, you're asking me on the tail end of helping them break the back of the Sith Empire. You might assume the kind of leverage that gives the Navy in making requests," _Carth could almost hear her wink through the comms, "_so what is it that I can help you with?_"

"Well, Admiral…" he remarked coolly, "it's actually a favor for some good friends of mine…"

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_Mortar shells screamed overhead from the firebase on the riverbank, exploding in waves of searing flame into the heart of the Sith line. Enemy infantry came pouring out of their jungle trenches, immolated in their armor and desperate for the cool salve of the rapids. _

_Daskoth, a jungle world in the Mid-Rim, was to be the breaker upon which the Sith army would bleed. The Dark Lord's spearheads were viciously trying the Republic line anywhere it could, in one case probing so deep as to reach Kuat. _

_Sith shuttles and fighters descended from the sky like a million drops of rain, much like the Basilisks had so few years ago. Although deprived of the cream of its officer corps, the Republic Army nonetheless established an ardent defense in Daskoth's hostile terrain, intent on making the Sith pay for every inch of ground. Ideally, the Sith would waste away all of their momentum on fortress worlds such as these, giving the Republic vital time to rearm and regroup._

"_Second Platoon, move up, on me! Come on!" Sergeant Bannick screamed over the din of hellfire. Once the mortars and rockets ceased their infernal screams, he stood up on the lip of his slit trench and waved his blaster rifle in the air, urging his men forward._

_Moments ago he was only a squad leader in a company detachment of Republic Naval Commandos. The grisly death of his platoon sergeant and lieutenant at the business end of crimson sabers had left him with the burden of command over some thirty men, which he only realized after he ended a Dark Jedi acolyte's bold raid with a spurt of blasterfire into his back._

"_First Squad swing around to the left! Second and Third Squads follow me! And repeater team, lay down cover fire as we move!" Coriff Bannick barked over the chaos._

_The moment his squad leaders acknowledged his imperious command, he let out a primal battle cry and charged across the river, trampling the bodies of scorched Sith riflemen and warriors. _

_While the artillery had certainly softened up the enemy's forward slope defense, it had also alerted them to imminent attack; many novice Republic officers who filled in for those above them who defected to Revan's army had not yet learned to conduct barrages at random intervals to deny the enemy his ability to predict offensives. And the veteran grunts were suffering as a result._

_Bannick felt the heat of blasterfire surge past his face and heard their viscous, sickly reports against the flesh of his men, followed by the cold slaps of their bodies collapsing into the surging river. His repeater squad returned fire almost instantly - with disappointing results. Their shots diminished in the thick jungle and passed over the enemy trenches, whose bombed-out former occupants were just now being replaced by the reserve line._

_But once that reserve line was gone? A straight path to the enemy's rear guard area. And that meant ammo dumps, comms stations, and medical posts._

_Sergeant Bannick felt supercharged once his boots met solid ground on the riverbank. He held his blaster rifle at hip level, its long vibro-bayonet fixed and hungry for blood, and sprinted at the enemy line. Counting the footsteps behind him he figured that no more than four or five men remained out of some twenty he stormed across the river with. There was no time to think about that. There would be no victory without sacrifice._

"_Come on! Kill! Kill! Kill!" He shouted encouragements at his men._

_The enemy's fortified line came into view. Surrounded by embers and scorch marks, the trenches were mostly intact. The massive dual repeater cannon had been knocked out by the barrage, which explained how any of Bannick's men had made it across at all. The first man who spotted Coriff, a Sith lieutenant with his cap on backwards and shirt discarded from the jungle heat was desperately swapping out the battery of his blaster pistol. His eyes shot open with a surge of fear as Bannick vaulted over the charred fragments of stakes guarding the front of the trench. Bannick landed on top of the officer, driving his bayonet home through the heart. _

_Just as the deceased officer's men turned to avenge him, they were cut down with intersecting fire. First Squad had come around from the left and were pouring fire down the vulnerable sides of the trench just as the remnants of Second and Third vaulted the lip and overpowered the remaining Sith with their own accurate barrage._

"_Staff Sergeant! It's a clear shot to- HRK!" Corporal Troond's words died in his pulsating throat, which his gloved hands picked and grabbed at uselessly._

_There. Sauntering down from the command post like a god. _

_Revan crushed the man's windpipe with a casual twist of his finger, leaving him to die painfully on the jungle floor. He looked upon the meager commando team left alive from storming his forward position._

_They had fallen so carelessly into his trap. After so long, he would get to test the legendary Naval Commandos. Or what was left of them anyways._

_Revan deftly raised his saber, deflecting the enemy's fusillade and sending the blasts back to their points of origin with flawless accuracy. In the blink of an eye, all but one of the attackers was dead or dying; food for the insects._

_It was only them. Coriff stared at Lord Revan, who was above him and framed perfectly before the descending evening sun – his shadow was cast at Coriff's feet and he was entranced by the surreal beauty of the moment._

_Neither man moved, Coriff nor Lord Revan, entranced by the other yet hungry to kill. He was so powerful, Coriff thought, and he could kill so easily. The jungle macerated the armies around them and digested men into rotten biomass, between the staccato reports of fire and the grunting of apex predators._

_Coriff looked down at the parapet upon which he stood and stared at glints of white mired with blackened cracks. He took one into his hands and inspected it only to find it was a tooth._

_He shut his mouth in an instant and cried out, but through his lips and melting through his hands fell his rotted teeth, ejecting from burning gums and seating themselves into pads of moss on the jungle floor._

_Yet Lord Revan was occupied when he looked back up – he was engaged in a frightening duel, and Coriff saw beside him a Jedi woman, tall and proud, with two pigtails and raised hands casting her power. Both mages suffocated each other with their invisible might and the fist of air enclosing Lord Revan's windpipe was felt equally by Coriff._

_He was simply overwhelmed with suffering. He could not breathe, and the last of his teeth fell into the dirt. After them poured a waterfall of blood out of his mouth and over his bottom lip, and the flow melted into damp soil._

_Coriff had no choice but to erupt at the intruder in a frenzied physical attack. Its presence defiled him, but was distracted, and by bashing her with the weight of his rifle he threw her down the hill. She rolled into the stream and lay there curled in pain with a heaving chest, the shallow rapids picking her up and carrying her slowly over the rocks._

_Now the man and the shadow confronted each other once again. Coriff's body refused to hold together and it fell apart with increasing severity. One eye boiled into liquid and streaked down his cheek in thick, white rivulets. Skin boiled off of arms, muscle dripped off of bone like red cream in the sun._

_He knew he had only one chance now, when the fault lines cracked into the exposed bone and crashed fragment into fragment like tectonic plates. _

_Coriff reared his rifle back, preparing a bayonet charge with all of his strength._

"_YAAAAAAAAGH!"_

_Revan couldn't suppress a bellowing chuckle. He slid effortlessly out of Bannick's path, pirouetting around his back and stomping on his front foot, forcing him to keel over. As Coriff slid and crashed forward, Revan raised up his saber from behind and plunged it through the commando's back._

_Lord Revan's heart burned._

_He looked down. His own saber burst out of his chest, searing his organs and garroting the life out of him with an insurgent pain._

_His mouth opened in noiseless scream._

Bastila scrambled out of her chair, invoking stasis with the Force to hold down his arms. She desperately clamped down on him, stopping him from ripping at the bandages around his chest. As his eyes shot open, he scanned the room in visceral panic and thrashed at his bonds.

In a moment, he calmed down, and his ragged breathing slowed. Bastila released him. Revan tore off his breathing mask and tried to sit up, only to wince and clutch his abdomen at the attempt.

"Gods, Revan! Are you okay?"

"I… I…" he clutched at his chest. It took a minute for his heart rate to return to normal, in which time Bastila leaned over him and stroked his face.

"Shh… you're alright. You're safe. We're on the _Ebon Hawk_…"

Revan paused, and then his mind swam from realization.

"So, I'm not dead?"

Bastila bit her lip and denied a powerful urge to slap him. "No, you are not _dead_ Revan. We won," she cooed, "_you_ won. Malak is dead and the Star Forge is destroyed. We'll be on Lehon soon."

"Lehon…"

"Yes, Lehon," she indulged.

Gingerly, Revan laid himself back down, keeping firm grip on the metal bar beside his bed in so as to engage his outrageously pained abdomen as little as possible. He looked up at Bastila, whose eyes were fraught with worry . He reached out and gently traced her cheek, lingering for a moment. He urged her down softly and kissed her with all the tenderness he could muster.

He felt her smile in her kiss, and soon there were odd tears trickling down their faces. Of joy. Relief. Victory. Desperate passion, and rescue from the utter depths of despair.

Bastila deepened the kiss, humming as her tongue danced across his. Revan's other hand was soon tracked over the small of her back, and both of hers cupped his worn face, prickly and unshaven from days in action. But to Bastila, just to feel him and love him here was a gift without equal.

Revan pulled her closer. Her head rested in the gulf of his neck. Streaks of Bastila's damp hair were gossamer curtains blurring his sight.

"_Ahem_."

Their cheeks flooded with red and Bastila nearly fell over scrambling off of the bed.

"You damn kids are too excitable these days! Feh. If you're done sucking his face like a mynock on an ion engine, _Bastila_, I'd like to see how he's doing."

Flush-red and stone-silent out of total embarrassment, Bastila slunk into the corner chair and placed her shaking hands on her lap while Jolee took stock of Revan's injuries and the medical readings. Every now and then he "uhumed" or "aha'd" at the bevy of jury-hooked datapads.

"In her defense, I started it."

"Bah. You're a young man stuck in a hospital bed. She should know better than to play the seductive nurse," Jolee chided in his standard-issue old Jedi coot lecture voice, "_especially_ when you could be making these wounds worse!"

Bastila looked on, her mind occupied with trying to remember any Force ability that could teleport her out of the situation.

"Looks like no damage done though," Jolee chimed. Suddenly, he rubbed his fingers in Revan's hair and ran his hands across his face. "Checking for anything else we missed… or blood that I can't see."

The old Jedi roughly examined his nose and chin, then prodded at his chest. His fingers hovered over Revan's abdomen, apparently debating whether or not to cause more suffering. But suffering quickly won out, and his deft, wrinkled hands poked into four spots on the former Sith lord's abs, each time eliciting a pained grunt.

Next, he put his palm in front of Revan's left hand. "Push against me."

He switched to the back of the hand. "Push against me."

Then the right hand, and his feet and all his toes. Lastly, he carefully rolled him on his side and traced his vertebrae. After all that was done, he finished up by jostling Revan's legs around for any major fractures.

"It's just a formality, really. If you broke your femur, the whole Republic fleet would hear it!"

"I was in the Republic Navy, Jolee." Revan groaned. "When's the first aid refresher over?" His mind traced back all the routine trainings in his service history. He must have practiced triage exams a few hundred times at commando school.

"In the army, kid? I recall you commanding it," the old man grumbled. Jolee pinched his chin and grunted. He flicked Revan on the forehead and laughed.

Revan furrowed his brows. _Of course he had_.

"Right about now. I think you're doing pretty good for a whippersnapper who just faced down the best the Sith Empire has to offer!" He laughed and placed his hands on his hips. "It's good to have you back, Revan. I think I speak for the whole crew when I say it would have crushed us all if you died... at least before giving us the credentials for our bank account."

Revan smiled back at him. "I appreciate it, oldster. How bad was I injured?"

"Pretty beat up. You passed out when you came back to me and Juhani and Bastila. She carried you the whole way, you know," Jolee cocked his head and gestured towards the redeemed Jedi still burning with humiliation.

"I think I remember that…"

"About those credentials, my boy. Do you know what living in a jungle hut does to old people? I have old bones and the Wookiees won't even chew my food for me. Now, you can fence all these old relics we've picked up since the war's over, and I can buy myself a little vacation home on Zeltros… no, Hesperidium!"

Revan laughed. "You'll have to ask the rest of the crew, but I'm sure we can find the money. Bastila?"

Jolee rubbed her shoulder and patted her twice on the back. Next he swapped out Revan's pillow, stripping the cover off of the old one and fluffing the new one.

"She put everything she had into bringing you back to the _Ebon Hawk_ and healing you, my boy. She passed out right on the deck once we came aboard. Damn girl nearly killed herself. There's no telling if you'd still be breathing without her." Jolee's sagely tone betrayed his double meaning.

"I guess that means I owe you for _two_ now, huh?" He said softly, regarding her with an air of warmth.

"All I care about is that I still have you, my love," Bastila mumbled.

The old man stomped his foot on the deck. "And all you kids owe me is to keep it in your pants so long as poor old Jolee is taking care of you! Next time I check on you I'm bringing the Jedi spray bottle, damn it!"

He huffed and stormed out, in his own unique way of showing how much he cared. His exit opened the floodgate of the rest of the crew, who crammed into the medbay shouting all at once to their fearless leader. Bastila bit down on her fist, realizing the previous exchange was now common knowledge on the little ship which was their shared world.

The team Mandalorian was a natural first candidate to force his way to the front of the mob.

"Revan! _Nothing_ can kill you, can it? Lord Malak. Bastila. Half the Sith army, _or_ the wounds they leave you with… it must have been a great privilege for Mandalore to die at your hands!" Canderous slapped him roughly on the shoulder, imparting about the same force as a grappling war droid.

"I'm the only one who cares to listen to your war stories, Ordo, I couldn't die on you," Revan smirked, shooting him a thumbs-up. "If I died you might last a week until you cracked from the boredom."

"You had better enjoy them, since you won't be able to get rid of me for a _long_ time. There's no doubt left. You _are_ the greatest warrior any living Mandalorian could follow. I said it before and I'll say it again: I'm your man until the end, Revan, wherever that takes us."

Mandalorian and former Sith nodded at each other, a special understanding held in that gaze. At that moment, Mission shoved her way through and around Canderous' meaty arm and flung herself forward, wrapping Revan in a tight hug.

"By the stars Cor- I mean, Revan- I… I… I didn't think you were gonna make it!" The blue Twi'lek pouted with mock anger. Shimmering tears welling at the corners of her eyes told a different story. "I was so scared we were gonna lose you forever!"

Revan reciprocated the hug, patting her back. "We took down a rancor together, Mission. What makes you think Malak could give me any trouble?"

"Just you flopping down unconscious on the ramp, asshole! Have you _seen_ yourself?"

"Oh, these?" He queried, staring curiously at the layered gauze. "I just tripped and fell on the way out. Safety hazards everywhere."

"You're the worst," Mission whined. She buried her face in his shoulder, letting out one or two last sobs.

"Don't worry… I'm still here kid."

"J-juss 'cause I'm glad you're back doesn't mean you can call me kid," was the muffled complaint.

Revan laughed and smiled. And when Mission released him and stood up, she was smiling too. The rest of the crew sorted to the front, each taking their turn to greet and wish well to the crew's _de facto_ leader.

"Jovial Statement: Master, your triumph in this battle brings me joy I haven't felt since I was just a central processing unit on an assembly line. Your meatbag extermination abilities are commendable. One day I shall learn your power," the droid's eyes glowed suddenly, "you will program it into me, Master, and the meatbags will be finished. Except for you because you are truly beyond reproach, master!" HK-47 marveled in his own sardonic sing-song way.

"I am pleased you made it out okay," Juhani said humbly, "I know there is much you have left to teach me. You have so much knowledge to pass on now that the war is over."

Zaalbar stoically re-affirmed his life debt and expressed his admiration in the most flowery display of Shyyriwook Revan had ever heard. T3 beeped at him quite chipper.

"So?" Mission interrogated, leaning in past Canderous once again.

"So what?"

"So what happened!? You got Bastila back and killed Malak, right? What did he say, what did he do? Was it close? Did he have guards?"

"I mean, I…" Revan started. Where _would _he start? "We… we fought our way through the station… there was no end to the troops and droids Malak threw in our way."

"Oh come _on,_ Revan," Canderous loudly beseeched, "you should know by now all the elements to telling a good war story. If not from your _own_ wars, then from mine. Look here," he tapped on Mission's head, "the Twi'lek here is bored half to sleep already."

"Agreement: Master, the Mandalorian is quite correct. Those of us who stayed behind to protect the ship did not get to witness what was surely wanton slaughter on your part. Slaughter, and beheading. And copious use of incendiaries. Well, perhaps _that_ is wishful thinking on my part, Master. You are a Jedi after all, and this is a disability I have thus far… been _unable_ to cure." HK's processor audibly clicked. "Be that as it may Master, my processors are overheating with excitement to hear the gory details of your triumph over the feeding tube meatbag."

Several pairs of feet shuffled away from the hunter-killer droid.

"Query: Master, did you remove his artificial jaw before he died? The complications from such an attack would have been exceptionally comical. Statement: If I were there, I would have started on his tendons with the lascutter in order to-"

The injured Jedi raised his hands in mock surrender. "Alright, I'll try again, okay? Alright, here…" Revan cleared his throat and narrowed his eyes darkly. "We plunged headfirst into the belly of the beast. Just me, Jolee, and Juhani. We came across a squad of Dark Jedi masters that had just wiped out an advanced element of the strike team. Their leader raised her saber and let out a battle cry…" the crew leaned in, "and I could tell they thought us easy prey. And that's when Juhani and I leapt ahead…"

Revan proceeded to recount the whole assault, bulkhead by bulkhead, deck by deck. Canderous nodded along and growled the occasional "damn good" whenever the former Sith recounted a particularly one-sided fight or graceful kill. Mission stared with wide, unblinking eyes, silent the whole time. Zaalbar let out concerned grumbles whenever the Jedi team was against bad odds. HK and T3 processed everything silently from the back, although Revan could tell the assassin droid was registering his moves for further study every time his photoreceptors blinked and flashed following particularly vivid descriptions.

One day he would have to break it to that droid that there was no module he could install to simulate the Force; that was a conversation he was unprepared for.

"…and then we made it up to the command deck." Revan stared forward into the end of the bulkhead. Bastila neatly stood up from her seat in the corner, walking over to Revan's bed and sitting at the edge. She laid a hand gingerly next to his, whose trembling fingers Revan wrapped in his own. His thumb absently traced the top of her hand, summoning calm.

"We dueled," she admitted, over the pain throbbing in her voice.

"We dueled. Bastila came back to the light… and she helped us win the day," Revan finished plainly. "And that was that… just…" he sighed, selecting the features of his narrative, "just the issue of Malak remained. The Dark Lord was bolstered by the Star Forge itself, and pods of captured Jedi from Dantooine."

Revan's tale-telling low rumble left his voice, as did the epic pacing. Instead he screwed his eyes shut, desperately rejecting the visceral memories of life forces snuffed out around him. They were torn away from the Force, sucked into the void of Malak's voracious dark power. As those Force spirits churned in the air, their suffering ran along his skin like burning rivers, and every last hair on his body had stood up in solidarity with the silent screams.

"I tried to save him, in the end. Redeem him. But there was no coming back from the path I started him on." He stared blankly ahead.

"Did he keep a reserve or was it a straight shot to the observation deck?" Canderous asked.

_Revan stepped into the machine hall, wounded yet effervescent from the triumph, re-armed with a modicum of a sense of self._

_The field of bodies looked more like a museum diorama than the aftermath of a battle, in a glass case of little soldier figurines placed in their artistic final moments. Here an Ithorian assassin lay dead in the sea of ichor, surrounded by corpses rammed into walls by her final scream. There, a Sullustan had died back-to-back with a pair of Twi'leks, over there a human and a Bothan in the spread of bodies counting in the hundreds._

_It was such perfect violence, still as it ended. Not one combatant stood, all taken or in the throes of death by the time of Revan's return. It captured a mystery that he realized died with the Dark Assassins. Did they fight for him to retake the throne, misunderstanding his purpose? But how could they be so oblivious to his motivations and the fact he advanced with the Jedi if they could arrive with such perfect timing?_

_Always too many questions now that Revan was Revan again. He dreamed of a simpler life, anonymous and without skill on some farming world where he lived and died in the humble radius of a little woodland hamlet. Maybe in a past life, or in the next. But he didn't have the luxury to be ignorant so he stumbled through the bodies, leaking some of his own blood into their communal departed sea. It was his offering and he felt that it earned him the basic dignity to see them where they could not mask themselves._

_In a strange way the whole Dark Assassin order revealed itself to him, all their faces and their secrets naked to him in death. To him they surrendered their greatest weapon: the shadowed legend they wore like a shroud, so had they lived in the public's mind as powerful phantoms. Only mortal, in the end. And somehow Revan earned their sacrifice; somehow they cherished him above the survival of their mystique – and all the members of their ranks._

_A hand scraped Revan's boot._

_The Falleen dancer with fading eyes looked at him, snapping open the blood-crust aegis that stuck his lips together. "My Lord…" he wheezed. "My Lord, you are victorious."_

_Revan was on the ground in an instant, forgetting his wounds and trying to extricate the assassin leader from a tomb of bodies laid atop him._

"_Let's get you out of here. We have a ship we can-"_

"_Silence, Lord… I die… for _you_ this day…" he coughed a few times, which painted his chin with fresh bloodspots. "Let me serve you only one last time…"_

_He ignored the plea and despite his frailty raged against the bodies fallen over the assassin, struggling to move their limp forms in any direction. He was spent – there was just nothing left in him._

"_We can get you out of here, I just need to find my team. They can pull you out of here and we can heal you."_

"_Unnecessary, and impossible," the Falleen grimaced and reached into a chest pocket._

"_I've let so many men die before, I can save you-"_

"_Foolishness, Lord!" Revan was taken aback by his roar – much of what life remained inside the Falleen went into it. "If you would be such a fool, then let me die rather than serve you! Instead I give you this and expire happily. My duty is done, and if you think of me then you only forget your _own_ duty."_

_The Falleen pushed a plastic datachip into Revan's hand, closing it into a fist._

"_Now _we_ are victorious, Lord. Now we are…" he trailed off into a fit of moist coughs and his whole body wracked under the strain._

_Revan placed the chip inside of his robe and held the man gently. "What is your name?"_

"_Name… my name… " he gasped and cleared the liquids from his throat with all his body had left to give, spraying his robe and tabard one last time with phlegm and blood. "Gilad Nhouret, Lord… Gilad…"_

_Eyes fixed on the overhead lights and a rasping breath faded into nothing. He was gone into the Force._

%%%

%%%

Carth shut the door behind him and Revan was finally alone after the well-wishing mission of his crew ceased after most of the details were told and all the assurances were given.

His friend, or better yet his brother would dig up the personnel records with Admiral Dodonna that he mused could have answers to his questions. Gilad Nhouret was at least a name, and of all the questions Revan had to answer this is one he didn't dread, since it was more like dignifying a hero than just unlocking the algebra of yet another past crime.

Once more he glanced at the door. Of course it was closed, but he checked now and again after he stuck the datachip into a pocket-sized holoprojector and let it play.

An image of himself sprouted. Darth Revan, with all the majesty of his robes and the most famous mask in the galaxy stared at the camera – at the viewer. A message to himself?

He looked to be in his personal quarters. Revan noted Darth Revan's surroundings and identified them with the general architecture of the _Leviathan_-class cruisers, yet that didn't tell him quite what time period it was.

But the mask came down, placed on a desk with a heavy sigh while calloused fingers ran through greasy, unkempt hair. Sunken eyes deep like gravity wells were underlined with thick purple bags. Tired, _yellow_ eyes.

"_We are in hyperspace right now to Foerost. Beginning the next crusade: our return to the Republic…_"

It was Revan. _Darth _Revan, but _Revan_, and he looked at himself in the camera and Revan stared back at him from the projector. It was such a queer way to connect with himself and it filled him with such a fierce longing to identify with something, anything, _finally_ rooting himself in an aspect of real. But he hated that image and hated those eyes – he spent so long fantasizing that he had been the one to take the life from them, jealous of the great Bastila Shan who had.

He stared at the image of Darth Revan like a child stares mystified by a parent, wondering how they exist, amazed at how they command themselves in ways they do not themselves yet comprehend. He could have ejected the little plastic chip and crushed it, destroying what he could of Darth Revan, but it would not change that he himself made that recording… they were his own words, somehow, from the same life, and only a few years prior? It hurt just to think about, and so he let the idea fly away into the night and roost in the folds of his mind, increasing the number that would scatter and tear away his sanity in their claws when he would inevitably shine a light on that compounding darkness.

"_I have learned from great men, many of whom are no longer with me, to plan for all circumstances. This is a gamble-" _he turned his attention to a series of quick raps on his door. He bellowed at Malak to be patient, and continued, much quieter. _"This is a gamble. A bigger gamble than I ever made during the last war. And if I lose the plot… This is something of a strange position I'm in. I am leaving this as a warning to myself, but… my ability to tell you anything is severely restricted. And that is my quandary. A version of myself who needs to know such things is exactly the person who cannot be trusted to know. So if you're in a position to receive this message, _Revan, _you must _remember_. Go back to the start. That will tell you everything you need to know."_

Darth Revan stared into the camera, pondering his own reflection in the lens, although to Revan it was an uncanny appraisal of his own soul. A part of him now wished he'd never done this at all. Then he put the mask back on and cleared away the desk; twin sabers like spurs clapped on his thigh guards.

He looked to the door after another round of Malak's knocking and then leaned over the camera reaching for the switch. "_You must think me quite weak, Sakad. I suppose you are, in some way, correct_."

%%%

%%%

"_You promised we would meet the third," Coriff droned. His A-40CX balanced on his knees and the emergency floor lights were fading out. Backup power was failing._

"_I only said that it would be soon. He isn't the most important of us anyhow," replied Lord Revan._

"_Bit of an egotist, aren't you?"_

_Lord Revan only glared at him through the mask. "You misunderstand. The real answer to that question doesn't please me. You should know as much."_

"_You could stand to open up more."_

"_And I am trapped here with you, who I disdain and desperately wish to slay. Yet we are each others' prison." Lord Revan reveled in Coriff's nasty scoff. "See? We both have wishes. Tend to your own. Mine are not for you."_

"_The waiting is getting to me."_

"_It bothers me too."_

_Lord Revan stroked his chin and massaged the hilt of his saber for comfort._

"_If I shot you and you stabbed me, would it be over?"_

"_If only it would and I could be free of you."_

"_Maybe you would change into something better," Coriff joked._

"_You're a funny one," Lord Revan chortled dryly, "it's my own domain. Would there be a purifying aspect? I suppose there might. But the odds are good I would come back and take even greater umbrage with you. No, we must wait for the third."_

"_I want us to get along this time. I really do. We need this…"_

"_Don't speak to me about my needs," Lord Revan barked. "We will handle things as they come."_

_He turned away and looked out of the viewport to ignore his cold sweat. _


	11. Arpeggio

_His radioman threw them both to the ground a heartbeat before the lashing spray of hot wood splinters blew out from the trunks of the trees. Blasterfire raked their position, walking up from the thickened trench lips, into the sandbagged gun nests, above their heads and into the branches of Umbaran foliage. They were under attack from the conscripts – other companies were not so lucky._

_His voice would be threadbare the next day from these grueling, perpetual night hours of calling missions to his artillery, supporting his stranded battalion commander with his own saber and aimed fire from the other end of the ridge. Fire flashes of sent rounds were swallowed by the ink-black sea of brush and forest infested with the enemy's overwhelming mass. He felt that ethereal quality stretching, with a commander's sixth sense attuned to the spirit of a battle, the will of his defense groaning, the cords of strength holding his men together fraying with each fresh assault._

"_Mechanized company, this is Nexu Actual, describe your situation, over!"_

"_Nexu Actual, Lambda 2-2 is overrun! Perimeter breached at multiple points… -re gathering at the headquarters, several platoons of repulsor-tanks, conscripts and shock-… contact right, _contact right!_ Varu, get that blaster cannon, take the right flank!" Their call was interrupted by the staccato popping sound of a nearby repeater maxing out the rudimentary microphone on the old comms set. "Nexu Actual I will hold this position as long as I can, but we're taking the brunt of it here!"_

"_Mech company…" Revan put his hand over the receiver. He'd not even noticed that his radioman was returning fire down the hill with a holdout blaster, clutching an arm wet with blood and rain._

_The shock troops were focusing on the mechanized company. Three hills, three chances to get it right. At least he predicted this one, for whatever accolade that puny accomplishment was worth. He looked to his own tanks assembled on "his" of three hills, stuck in the mud and bolted up to their turrets with extra armor, pouring shots down the hill at the sea of Mandalorian conscripts swarming the brush beneath the three hills, like a raging sea under the shoulders of lonely islands. He was barely holding on now, no way to get the tanks moving, no way to get them through the lowlands, no way to get them back up a hill, exposing their side armor, no way to clear the path…_

_The brigade up on the small mountain behind them all provided an effective forward-slope defense throwing a surplus of tank, howitzer, and mortar shots into the enemy's main body. _

_This was it. The full weight of the attack. It wasn't a brigade in front of him._

_It had been two full divisions._

_Cursing the name of General Kiassi, Revan put the receiver up to the mouth of his mask._

"_All callsigns this is Nexu Actual, pop smoke on your perimeters at intervals of twenty-five and fifty meters from whatever line you are maintaining, how copy?"_

_He looked up. Soon there were plumes of red and yellow smoke pushing out of the trees – thank the Force for the weather – not mixing with each other, stretching right up into the sky, demarcating the position of each company. Now their final ally was lost: the darkness of the Umbaran night, and the Mandalorians would descend with their conscripts and artillery on the revealed positions._

_Perfect targets for the air support, assuming they could beat the Mandies to the punch._

"_Starsign FAC, this is Nexu Actual, relay message: scramble all aircraft to my position, we are in danger of being overrun! The enemy is in force at _this _location, _not_ the river crossings! Shattered saber!"_

_Revan leaned out of cover, watching the new battalion commander struggle on a towing rope with eight other men, the treads of a Czerka heavy tank pelting their faces with mud and budging only in gasps and spurts. The horizontal drive whined when the turret scanned left and right, firing the co-ax into the brush where the IR scope showed white-hot masses of conscripts making their platoon-sized rushes._

_They would be fine. The first company was in good hands._

"_My positions are marked with smoke at intervals two-five and five-zero, out."_

"_Relaying, out."_

_Revan half-ran, half-hobbled in a low crouch to the captain and the stuck tank. He took him firmly by the arm._

"_Captain Nhouret, I'm going to the mech company. Is the situation here stable?" Revan filled into the team behind the captain, invigorating his arms with the Force and rooting himself deeply in the mud._

_Gilad Nhouret didn't drop the tow line, only bowed his head marginally while focusing on the task. Another man called the heaving cadence. "Just relieved my outer line. Tightened the ring. B22 just blew its engine. B45 right here can't move. One, eighteen, and twenty are knocked out."_

"_Any other problems?"_

"_The new Daragon GPS kits won't key in to the sat-frigate. Smoke clarifies the problem. Glass everything outside our ring."_

_A sinew of fire curled out of the barrel of an enemy tank caught on the rocks while trying to climb the hill, holed just beneath its turret mantlet by the stranded B22. It quickly lanced into a torch-jet and soon there were crowning fires in the treetops. Revan, Nhouret, and the rest of the towing crew averted their eyes from the sharp and distinctly un-Umbaran brightness._

"_You're telling me. I can stand the name but this gear's been giving us shit since the jump-off point."_

_After three more tugs, the heavy was triumphantly dislodged, her engine roaring gleefully as the beast pulled away to the safety of a dugout._

"_Good luck General. May the Force be with you."_

"_And with you."_

%%%

%%%

The unknown world of Lehon despite itself indulged in the liberal frailty of serene, tropical existence. Its natural bounty had once withered away, the virility displaced by the sheer weight it endured as the seat of the Infinite Empire's bloodthirsty regime. But that political entity long slipped under the waves of time, and thousands of years' passage restored the gentle rule of nature. The Rakatan tribes who remained, ignorant of the greater share of this past, enjoyed Lehon more as a hammock than the barracks of their distant ancestors' time.

It could have been unfortunate to see Republic troops and Republic sailors swarming over the islands in their makeshift camps had there been anything to keep them there, but the death of the Star Forge blessed Lehon to become, at its busiest, a way station with a control tower and a fuel dock. The sprawling architecture of the Republic would extend its narrowest tendril to touch this world, for the sake of touching it and no more, leaving only a runestone for one of time's identically flavored victories.

Despite knowing this Revan still choked on a fleeting anxiety that the cruisers and provisioning ships and frigates and starfighters would never take to the sky and instead create the nucleus and primordial organelles for a colony. Empires come and go, but a bland formal democracy might commit the greatest evil of all and persist, assembly-line processing the unspoiled natural glory into saleable commodity – feeding the consumer galaxy an other deprived of its otherness.

Revan was curious at himself for thinking this, since he'd never been so concerned for other worlds before. Perhaps it might well be a colony and enjoy the influx of information technology, medicine, and education. He was an avowed defender of that titan of democracy, always had and always would be. Yet that quanta of anxiety remained. He reasoned that it must have been how all men felt about virgin worlds their eyes drank first, a sort of chauvinistic jealousy for it to ever know another master, another observer.

Maybe.

The political consequences were always beyond him, as a soldier. Best to leave them as they rest in the datapad of a better man's story. What he'd loved – the Republic – remained. It was the proper time to feel reassurance from that, not the arbitrary projected interests of one rock out of a million million rocks.

He supposed the old Revan must have cultivated a special bond with the sand, and the sea, and the palms of wind tumbling out of the blue infinity. And then there was the acute pang of guilt for humanizing himself.

Besides, those other rocks had all the jazz clubs.

He stood with Carth in the shade of a _Quartermaster_-class provisioning ship parked between them and the morning sun, her blue paint flaked and spangled with carbon scoring and rear landing skids sinking into the sand at a concerning angle.

Its manager-proprietor adjusted the dangling marquee which spelled "ES ARA'S GR B" above the register. Behind her, the freshly roused kitchen staff moved frantically between the fryer and the stovetops to reinforce the buffet station in anticipation of the impending breakfast rush.

Carth and Revan were early birds, dutifully so, and would have felt slobbish sleeping in, moreso than would have made it worth the comfort tradeoff, a concern few others on Lehon seemed to share. The first-in-line privileges at Essara's Grub were a considerable fringe benefit.

Essara – a combative, stout Corellian woman as so many of them seemed to be – swept through the kitchen like a tornado when she caught sight of one of the cooks.

"Why are you late? Do you like costing me money?" Essara castigated her Twi'lek cook, waving a spatula in his face. "Look here, we have window guests! War heroes! Waiting on their _flatcakes_, Jarn! Are you a _schutta_?"

The Twi'lek was fumbling with the straps of his apron.

"Essara, please, I'm sorry, can you please not yell in front-"

"I have to yell!" Essara rapped the head of the spatula on the stove. Jarn winced. "Because you're a _schutta_ and they deserve to know it! These brave war heroes oughta be kept informed who's making their flatcakes…"

She pushed Jarn off the flatcake station and submerged into the work. Her appearance was consistent with her temperament and occupation. She looked like a foodie, plump around the edges, but overwhelmingly dedicated to her profession. Her hair was cut short and bobbed with her falcon-like head movements which tracked all the busboys and all the cooks and all the droids, too. She certainly wasn't an old lady but she was by no means young. Her apron was freshly cleaned but deeply stained with colorful marks that would never come out. Yet as much as she played the predator in her own kitchen and her workers the prey, off of her wafted a sense of pure human geniality. She wasn't harsh for harshness' sake.

Two plates were set on the counter for Revan and Carth in no time. Hot, fresh Trandoshan flatcakes, moist and fluffy but not so wet they just fall apart, cascading with savory shredded grum and sultberry cream.

The men went to their table and dug in. For several minutes they said nothing, since the reckless noises of eating betrayed what was foremost on their minds.

With his three cakes gone, Revan leaned back and casually sucked on a finger that had been rolled in the orange sultberry cream. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a real fruit since Dantooine. He asked Carth something inconsequential and technical about the Aurek fighters. Revan was an admirer of flight, an eager passenger, but by any measure an abject failure as a pilot – according to Bastila, Revan didn't even get the basic 1-A flight qualification his _first _time around as a Padawan, let alone during the accelerated curriculum on Dantooine.

Carth had never felt he had the advantage over Revan, but the latter man was in perpetual awe of career pilots, men who set off into the gulf of the void between planets. In that infinite sea between the celestial islands of civilization, which are themselves no more than dots to a telescope and blips on gravimetric surveys, he purges fear and mystery. The captain as the prince at sea imposes an order on his little kingdom: he shelters his passengers within his craft like the stalwart light keeper's cottage at the jagged margins of a tyrant sea. He is unbowed, all-knowing, the cosmological mysteries of eons past are nothing more than his chart appendices, the little parades of numbers which he welds into a safe path home. When he switches on the rows of cabin lights and takes the helm it is only a routine to him, to spit in the face of an inviolate nothingness.

That is how Revan describes it, and though Carth sympathizes with a great deal of the romance, it is also the daily grind which feeds him and pays the rent. As he would say, anything becomes urbane when you get a paypacket over it.

"These are good… probably the second-best I've ever had."

Revan dipped his finger in leftover sultberry cream and licked it. "I'm not sure it can get any better than this, Carth. You've got some high standards."

"The Little Bivoli," Carth said, pointing. "Now _that_ was the best provisioning ship I've ever eaten at. Started the whole Trandoshan flatcake thing if I'm remembering it right. It was a few years ago, back during the other war."

"I thought that was a restaurant on Coruscant."

"Same place, same guy. He had a Trandoshan cook who came up with some way to make 'em special. Still not sure how he did it. One day I'm going to track him down and find out." Carth swallowed his last bite and sighed. "You remember when I told you about me and Zayne Carrick? Padawan murderer turned hero turned mercenary?"

"Still alive, isn't he?" Revan shrugged. "Probably half as much truth as it is urban legend. It sounds like he's supposed to be off the grid nowadays."

"Well he used to _work_ at the Little Bivoli. Spilled food all over me, too."

"I get the feeling your adventures with him were more interesting than ours. If I didn't know better I would accuse you of planning to abandon me for your cooler Jedi friend."

"Zayne? No…" Carth chuckled. "He's a good kid, but being around him was about as good for me as a cluster migraine. I almost lost my commission more than once because of that guy. _But_."

Carth folded his napkin and stuck it on his plate, using the film of leftover cream as impromptu adhesive.

"That's the first time I really got to see what Jedi can do. I knew the Revanchists were on their way into the military, but I had no idea what that could mean for us until I saw Zayne in action. And I knew that guys like you, like General Surik, were gonna be five times the game changer he could ever be. And after all that… I probably _under-_estimated you."

Inside Revan clipped at knots of self-destructive angst. He didn't often enjoy hearing about himself, but the curiosity was sometimes too overwhelming to cope with. All the good Revan did could never outweigh the bad.

"What did the military think of him... _him!_" Revan laughed bitterly. "What did you think of _me_ joining the war with all the other Jedi Crusaders?"

"Relieved. Every last one of us. It was like a prayer had been answered. Serocco and Taris were bad for morale but they didn't break us. Then Commenor and Exodeen fell, and all the big shipyards were in range of the Mandalorian fleet. We did our jobs after that but there weren't a lot of us left who thought we had a chance. Just spending our lives to delay the inevitable…"

"And then Duro happened."

"Duro happened. And Zeltros and Umbara before it. Neither of those two were really _huge_ victories but it gave us hope. Wasn't much of that going around after Exodeen," Carth took a sip of water, unzipping his jacket while the sun crawled above the horizon. "We had nothing else going for us – seeing you win, _twice_, felt good. But those were primarily land battles and we weren't sure what you could do for the Republic in space where we were taking the worst losses. Most people were saying you would keep us alive for another six months, maybe a year." Carth leaned in and crossed his arms on the table. "_Nobody_ expected Duro. Not me, not Karath, _nobody_."

"When I was a commando we read about the battles of the Mandalorian Wars. Most of us had fought in them, mainly the later battles but there was always a veteran or two from before the special forces reorganization hanging around. I always felt lesser in their presence, like I could never match their height grown from fighting in the worst days of the war. But I had been…" Revan sighed, shaking his head. "Always knew Revan was a traitor, but we recognized his victories. _My_ victories. Gods damn it…"

He groaned, leaning back and burning his eyes staring straight ahead at Lehon's star. He was sure he was speaking like a madman, but he wasn't. If only he could devise a way to talk like a mental case without giving the impression of being one. Yet he supposed that was the rub of it all.

"Mister Onasi, Mister Revan," Essara cut in, holding in front of her two plates of fresh hot Trandoshan flatcakes drowned in toppings. "I saw you men licking your fingers. Here's two more orders on me, for making you wait."

She set the new plates down and stacked the empty ones. Carth patted his stomach and groaned. "You're too good to me Essara but I don't know if I can handle it."

Across the table Revan slowly raised his hand, and Carth nudged his plate towards him approvingly. Carth couldn't imagine that anyone else but the former Dark Lord could do battle with three whole stacks and emerge victorious.

"Speaking of which, either of you two need a job? All you gotta do is show up on time."

"_Essara_!" loudly whined the unfortunate Twi'lek chef from the kitchen.

"They were on time to blow up the Star Forge!" Essara shouted back. "Why can't you be on time to cook flatcakes?"

She stomped back to the ship, satisfied her point was made, dumping the used plates at a wash station and joining in for the buffet preparation. Already a short queue had been established near the register, where a squat bith was already sliding meal cards.

In that time Revan had gorged through the first of the two new plates already with no indication that he would be slowing down. The way those innocent cakes were obliterated reminded Carth of metal recyclers, or a focused orbital bombardment. Apparently three days of med bay food wasn't enough.

"Fighting Malak took a lot out of you, huh?"

"And Bastila," Revan paused briefly to answer, a folded cake half-stuffed in his mouth with fruit cream dripping down like blood from a kill. "She beat the shit out of me."

"Then cool your jets a little bit NAFOD. I don't want you surviving all of this just to die in the refresher."

While Revan the carrion bird kept on desecrating Essara's masterpieces, Carth noticed the faint shadow in his friend's countenance, the element which wanted to wander out of Carth's gaze if not for the fact they were already commiserating over breakfast, and that a withdrawal would brook furthermore attention to it.

"I'm sorry if I brought up some bad memories. I just… I dunno, I'm working through all of this too. I only ever heard you as a voice on the radio, no more than a handful of times. It's hard to put the pieces together, you know?"

Carth waited for a protest, any sign that told him to stop: a wrinkle in the brow or an intermission of his chewing. None appeared, and he felt safe to continue.

"There was the Republic's hero, the man sending us our orders, the traitor, the Sith, and now he's also the guy who helped us _destroy_ the Sith. All of that is- it's just all one person, you're right _there_, and…"

Revan dabbed his chin with a napkin and pushed away two empty plates. He exhaled out of his nose, looking pointedly down at the table.

"I know Revan even less than you did. He was an old holonet article or a name attached to an after-action report. I have no… I have nothing in _common_ with him. He _can't_ be me. But I know he is. I have his powers, his dreams, maybe I have his memories, too. But does that make me him? Am I Revan? Am I Coriff-who-used-to-be-Revan? Was I _ever_ Coriff?"

"Can't imagine how this feels for you..." Carth paused. "I was about to call you Revan. That's what everyone else is calling you, but I don't think anyone's asked since the _Leviathan_, have they?"

"No, that's- that's delusional to call me anything else. I _am_ Revan, or maybe it's better to say I _inherited_ Revan. I'm responsible for what he did-"

"You're not _responsible_, or at least, you aren't responsible for-"

"So how does that work? I'm Revan, but I can't be responsible for Revan?" the former commando, the old Dark Lord of the Sith stretched out his arms, his eyes ablaze. "Do I have any agency left? If I'm not responsible, then I'm not really him, but I'm not Coriff, so that would leave me without any personhood in the first place!"

"It wasn't- it wasn't _you_ who did this, it was you from before-"

"Then where does the line get drawn!? When have I ever been _me?_" Revan shouted, and in an instant he and Carth were aware of the half-dozen soldiers sitting around them, very politely acting as though the most hated and powerful man in the galaxy turned hero wasn't just descending into conniptions in front of them.

"Maybe this isn't the right venue," Carth prodded, straightening his jacket.

"I'm sorry."

Revan stood and pushed in his chair gently with both hands. He didn't look at any of the soldiers and ignored Essara's goodbye. The day, now properly begun, was too claustrophobic for him.

"I don't want you to be sorry." They trod on warm sand which gave generously to the tread of their boots. "I want you to speak your mind, if you're hurting, which- which it seems like you _are, _stars know I've hurt before. But they can't see you like that. What'll they do without their hero, Revan?"

"They survived losing him before. They can lose him again."

Carth put out his arm to stop him and took Revan quickly by the shoulders.

"You just killed Malak, the Star Forge is destroyed, and the Sith are on the run. That's what _you_ accomplished. I don't care about Revan, or Coriff, or whoever is in between; if it doesn't mean anything to you just remember what it means to everyone else."

Carth looked down, aware of himself like a sailor who finds themselves steering into the wind without his charts. They stood at the head of a trail which led down to the south beach, where the _Ebon Hawk_ had returned for an isolated roost between the crags, under the shadow of a decaying cruiser stranded decades ago.

"I just don't know, Carth. I can't even say how confused I am, nothing like this has happened before. We're supposed to break down into the right pieces to fit our lives. But I'm still the wrong shape – more and more I get the feeling I'm only seeing a part of the picture… am I the wrong piece, or am I in the wrong puzzle? There's no language for what it is."

"No… no, I guess there isn't, is there? But you need to move forward. You're a hero to them. And to me. Never let go of that."

"If you stab someone in the back and then pull the same knife out, you're no hero. At best it can only make you less of a villain."

"That's…" Carth shook his head. "That's not how I see this at all. Look, I don't see us resolving this in one day, but I need some kind of assurance you're…"

He choked on the idea of his next words, still clutching Revan, imagining all his power gone away, the bone and muscle void and the essential fire of the Force extinguished. He descended into a deep chill which stood up his hairs and turned marrow into ice, squeezing on Revan's shoulders to know he was there. He was unwilling to imagine the shape of a galaxy where Coriff Bannick had followed through to avoid being Revan, tumbling on the deck, pinning the barrel of a weapon to his cranium.

_Zaalbar roaring._

_Coriff screaming at them to let him go, to let him send Darth Revan to hell._

"I'm nothing to worry about," Revan said very quickly. "I'm still figuring everything out, but you have my word," he tapped on the grip of his right-hand saber which rattled with his belt. "I promise on my weapon."

"Well, what about the other one?" Carth pointed.

"Greedy," Revan shook his head. "What would you do with _two_ lightsabers?"

They went down the trail, stopping at a shaded terrace before the final approach. Down below, Admiral Dodonna and her staff were engaged in conversation with Master Vrook and Master Vandar. Bastila stood off to the side, surely feeling Revan's presence as he felt hers, but not outwardly acknowledging it. Mission Vao sat idly on the gangplank with her datapad, pretending not to eavesdrop.

"Whatever you say about it I'm not a hero, Carth. Revan is an evil man, but I can do more good with the Jedi and the Republic than if I ran away from it all. I'm alive. I _am_ Revan, as much as anyone could be, and that means I have the right to leave him behind." He licked his lips. The saline air tugged on his skin. He looked over at Carth and when their eyes met he knew they were both thinking about the past.

"In the future I don't want to discuss the old me. I don't want to lionize him _or_ remember him. I'll let him perish… and everything I can do from now on to heal the galaxy is another brick I'll use to bury him."

"Leaving him in the past. Maybe we have a lot of that to do," Carth muttered, hands deep in the recesses of his pockets. He too wondered if there was a singular word or idea that would dispel the shifting jetsam which foamed the rippling pond men always believe is their mind. "I dug up a few things."

"Did you now?"

"Do you still want to know about Gilad Nhouret."

Revan looked down at the _Hawk_ and her attendant crowd. Was she sober and restless from these adventures, too? Maybe she could fly away on her own, like a raven, and abandon the middling crows.

No. Like Revan it could think anything in the world, but the world too, imposed thoughts. In such a fashion he was curious.

"I guess so. It would be worse not to know… I would speculate and that would only make him larger."

"Gilad Nhouret, Major, Republic Army," Carth recited. "Missing in action… like you and Karath."

When Carth looked at him, Revan looked away.

"You saw him on the Star Forge."

"I had a memory," Revan answered. Not quite a lie.

The fighter pilot stopped for a moment and looked up at the clouds.

"Falleen. Unusual, I hear they're as rare in the army as they are in the navy. Remarkable showing in officer training, high scores, physical aptitude in the top five for his class. Pretty standard tour of duty as a platoon officer for a reserve unit. Ended up in an interesting place."

"There's no reason to walk around it. I just need to know."

"Battalion commander in the 501st Division." Of course, why had Revan doubted it? "That was… that was _your_ unit."

"The Crusader Division," Revan corrected him. Even when he was Coriff he knew how nobody had ever called it just the 501st after Umbara. It had been the first of many 500-series "miracle" divisions, yet before the cadres sprouted new follow-on units with their own famous Jedi commanders, there had been no other place for the attention of the citizens to be dispersed: all their heroes lived in one unit, and to call it by its number was unacceptable banality.

He couldn't remember if he had liked the name nor did he care to. He would rather that waterspout memory descend beneath the conscious sea once more and remain – he only wished to confirm the magnitude of his betrayal, that even _now _he still had followers holding faith.

Perversion, he thought, with absolutely no exception whatsoever. The very thought turned his stomach over. But it was a nice day, the issue of the faithful had already settled itself, and free flatcakes would have been unusually tragic to throw up on the sand.

"Yeah, well uh…" Carth wrapped his orange jacket around the waist and tied off the sleeves, "best of luck with the diplomatic mission down there. I'm gonna find something to do that involves more tropical fruit and fewer admirals."

When Carth walked away and Revan set himself down the last twenty meters of the path he realized in a simple way, like recalling the time of day, that over the whole journey between Taris and Lehon he had never been afraid. Immediately he qualified the thought as not fearing anything _external_; he grew to fear himself and what he might be capable of quite deeply.

Yet, the experience felt overall extremely unfair in his enemies' favor. One commando and a small crew against the entire Sith Empire? One commando with backup against a single Sith was already a long-shot, but that titan was overcome as surely as each one after it had been. These interceding steps, these periods of training led him from anonymity to encounters with Darth Malak himself, and he was not quite sure which shares were training and which were remembering. That said, any task could seem enormous when taken as a whole, but even the impossible can become anti-climactic when sorted into its constituent tasks. How do you destroy an empire? One bite at a time.

Flatcakes, again, he thought. _How can I still be hungry?_

So, he killed Malak. Destroyed the Star Forge. Occasionally he had to look up at Lehon's star as one obsessively resets an alarm to confirm over again that the polar filament of hot plasma and the lumbering giant into which it spiraled were both evaporated.

He killed Malak. Destroyed the Star Forge. If all the Jedi were ranked, all the people in the galaxy, did that make him the _strongest_? No doubt he could find a better swordsman, and a better wielder of the Force, and a quicker thinker, but who could he name that synthesized all those traits the way he did?

It wasn't egotistical when he wondered about the phrase "there is always someone better than you" and whether or not the one person it logically couldn't apply to was _him_.

Well, there _was_ someone else, maybe a feeling more than a name, a smear of ink in an old chapter. A she.

As was a near-religious routine ever since the revelations aboard _Leviathan_, he quietly asked something more seeing and more powerful and more beyond him to replace on him the old gutter crown of anonymity; the new regalia was too strange, unbalanced, and perhaps brighter than he could ever imagine.

"Revan? I'm pleased to see you up and about. It would have been a tragedy to write you into the casualty rolls," said Dodonna, bowing her head slightly. As a person she appeared as the entire Republic's held breath released, her buoyancy immutable since the victory. So many damaged ships had limped away, so many wounded sailors were recuperating. "As a matter of fact we were just discussing the case of you and Bastila."

*** -_theirs/ours - … brazen … - ours - burn (!) purged (!) (confusion) _ ***

Like one blood vessel he felt his whole body throb. It pushed him. He remained rooted.

_What?_

Bastila was at his side before he felt her move. The pads of her fingers in a flash had stroked his arm, invisibly, disarming him even as she looked to the masters. He felt her as one feels a moment only in the past and later could not remember if she had even touched him.

"Big picture things, moral and ethical concerns, nothing about specifics until we return to Coruscant, of course," Bastila said flatly. "Whether or not we are criminals."

*** - _ours - … deserving of - theirs - warmth (!) burn (!) love (?) fire (!) no more … mine-self-ours-mine-self-ou ***_

%%%

%%%

What scared him was that nothing would happen.

What he feared most was the rancid festering of a new normality: forgiveness. No answers, no change, only a formless extension of the previous psychological chaos of the galaxy, painted over with a peace treaty, senate resolutions, and a fine speech, while he would be left stranded and crawling through the wreckage of his ignoble legacy. He feared that history would stand still until the next tragedy, and that without learning, this one would crush him.

Revan and Bastila weren't going to trial.

In the refresher sink he dipped his hands, filling the half-bowl formed from his palms, and threw it into his face. The water came down. He was still the same. Then a few round dollops of warm cream and the razor's buzz. He was still the same.

He cut new lines, whole fields and trenches, little patterns out of his facial hair until all of it was compacted nothingness in the razor's pressure receptacle. He stared into the mirror but only saw the schizophrenic stage-plays arising in his mind as if out of the ether.

He was like the sky and all his memories were the comets – they left their fire-trail streak but the essences dissolved.

"Coruscant _this is the _Riendhel_, our firebreaks are gone and the captain is bleeding out on the deck. Send rescue ships, I repeat, send-_"

Revan set down the razor and began to scrub his face. Blink.

"_Bravo One, all elements, withdrawing two hundred meters! I have four vics down, position untenable. I have two battalions bearing down on route two-five from the easterly direction. My infantry screen is being overr-"_

He massaged the gel into his cheeks, into the pores and between the little canyons of wear that showed on his supposedly young face. Blink.

"_Cease fire! Cease fire! Shots landing at _my_ position, multiple casualties, cancel fire order! Cancel the fire-_"

He wetted a rag and-

"_This is Mobile Hospital Three, all our tents are overfull! We cannot receive your ambulances at this time. You need to take your burn wounds to-"_

Blink. When he rinsed-

"_Hospital unit, this is Echo Five! I have eighty to ninety severe burn casualties, my men are dying over here! Please help-"_

Blink.

"_Revan! Leave me here, she's surrounded! Get my tanks to the medical outpost… Revan! REVAN-"_

Blink. Blink. Blink.

"_Four? Four, come in! Where is unit four!? Recon unit, dispatch vehicles towards zero-six-five north and make contact!"_

He stared into the mirror. Blink.

"_We're not leaving him! Take his hand- you two, move! Move, get the beams out of the way, the hull is coming down! On three…_"

It stared back.

"_Revan… did you know this would happen?" She said._

Revan glared into the heart of the mirror. He crawled into the empty void of reflected pupils and thrashed like an animal in pursuit of something, anything to just grab onto, any flesh to rend and blood to absorb.

"Me… me… _me_! Where are you!?"

All he found was a map of coordinates, an emotionless chart to things and words and locations, the floats buoying a illusory self. He kicked down every door and looked inside but the walls were blank and the books on the shelves had no words on their spines or in their pages.

He stumbled through this mind world drunk on rage and despair and left nothing untouched. Every door, every step made him feel farther away, and though he walked as if in the first person he could at the same time watch himself walk, from behind, drawing more and more distant by the second. The gaze of the second-eyes bobbed up and down like a careful predator in the pursuit.

He could feel nothing, he could _do_ nothing. In every sense, truly helpless. But the image that stared back, it was so _strong_. It was _Revan_! It was one man, mighty, undefeated! His reflection was a promise in the form of a singular unity.

The more he identified himself with this mirror Revan the further away he felt. He was drawing away, floating, as if weightless, his muscles becoming limp and slapping against nothing with any strength.

The countertop fractured and broke off into pieces underneath the death grip of his hands.

"That's me… that's me! _You_! Revan! "

He pointed. He went further into the void and entered more distant passages, kicking each door just beside the handle and splitting them in two.

_Revan. Hero. Conqueror. Knight. Villain. Hero. Jedi. Sith. Warrior. Killer. Victorious. Savior. Defender. General._

He was nothing under the gaze of the mirror. Inside him turned the many ill-fitted gears of different machines placed together, self-alienated, without a "me" and without an "I" to consider. Selfless internal destruction developed at the exact rate of internal creation.

"Please just be _me_!" Revan cried out.

A single thing – an idea – stared back at him, the pitiable shards of something _else_, unsorted lamina stacked one on top of the other until the repulsive machine finally moved.

His fist crashed into the center of the mirror. Huge fragments of glass studded his knuckles and poured a field of red streams down its surface. He no longer stared back.

The mirror split into three sections – one fracture from top to bottom, dead-center out of the impact point of his attack, separated the mirror into two equal halves. The right half was further divided by one fracture which traveled lengthwise, stopping at the center point.

In the left half he saw a young Jedi – it was _him_, long ago, under an old name, still in a student's robes unblemished by fire and combat, his eyes fixed upon him like the sharpest blade with a lone saber unlit in his hands. Sakad Gute.

In the lower right he saw Revan – Darth Revan, in his robes and mask with his sabers affixed threateningly at the front of his belt.

In the upper right he saw himself, what he begged and pleaded would be himself. Coriff Bannick, the humble soldier, staring neutrally with a blaster rifle slung over his back.


	12. Con Brio

The gaze of the mirror hid behind the panes of his eyes and he saw it reflected in all things. He played normal through the day: he said the right words and made the right facial expressions. Revan passed his examination from the ad hoc naval hospital and raised no suspicion.

Sitting across from him at tables Revan saw Coriff Bannick in his armor, helmet tucked under elbow. At a distance, beside the nurses, Darth Revan watched from behind the mask, curtained by the span of his robes. Going from place to place he heard loud, careless steps behind him, and saw Sakad Gute, relentlessly curious and ambivalent to being noticed shadowing his every motion.

That day he tried to be normal, but like the weight of a whole second man on his ribs he struggled to breathe, to live. Revan's sails twisting, snapping in the grip of a gale of misery. Nothing to be done for those assessing gazes – Revan's own gazes he supposed, ground through a filter born out of the murky submarine terror of his unconscious mind, a mind in which he was both the prisoner and the warden, yet increasingly surrendering his authority as natural forces rose like the tide and drove him to higher ground.

Ceremony followed ceremony, such was the case of dinner that night becoming yet another avenue of medals and fine speeches, although everything was building up to the next day whereupon all the officers and Jedi and heroes were to assemble in view of the lost island's ancient temple. That night, dying beneath the miserable weight atop him and fleeing the empty praises heaped at the dinner, Revan ate and said little then departed in a barely regulated haste.

Revan stumbled past crowds and made quick excuses to his crew. He saw Bastila Shan, when he left, and she was leaving too. Neither of them could speak a word to the other and there were no words to be spoken; they needed to be alone from all this picking of their scabs.

Revan was free, but all too free. He could only float where others walked; his spirit was full of the natural buoyancy of man yet all the sketch lines of human feelings that cross a life, the binding ropes hooking the spirit to the ground, had all but disappeared. As another man he had them, maybe even as other _men _he had them, until time and memory like the wind lifted them away into nothing. Bastila was one bind: a beautiful cord, the last thing which gave him density to remain earthbound. Yet was she enough? It could not possibly be healthy for him or fair to her. He could see it in his mind's eye, Bastila fraying, coming apart into vanished dust for lashing all his weight to the ground on her own. What cruelty – and was he not a moving cruelty in time already, his every breath a new score to the flesh of Jedi and democracy? The war still lived in his breath – enemy unvanquished, foe unpunished.

Coriff Bannick, the Republic Marine Commando. Revan, the hero of the Republic. Darth Revan, feared Dark Lord of the Sith and the whole entity of doom. He was all these men and none of them, and he thought of all the languages where his name now meant "terror" while he staggered out to the shoreline, one hand guiding him by the rough cliff faces. He was a lonely whaler caught in nature's palm sailing a broken ship into the closest harbor – the Elder Rakata camp on the eastern shore.

Orsaa, the history-keeper, had raised his hammock up between the trees sheltering the one path to and from the camp. He was the sort to be conscious of time's passage, to enjoy the moment of the future dissolving into the past, and on that night quietly nursed sweet juice of the agos fruit out of a canteen. Orsaa rocked his hammock gently in the absence of a breeze and thought of skyborne gods holding him in the celestial manger. He always said a good historian was someone young and awed, ought not their skin be thickened by the friction of age.

Most Rakata said he had a young heart and the accusation did not bother him. There was no mistaking the reverence others held for him, and the gravity his simple words held in every council: Orsaa combined the acuity and interest of youth with a lifetime of wisdom. He was one who said the most by saying the least.

"Revan. You are troubled."

Revan looked up through the trees, and against the image of Lehon's moon was the silhouette of Orsaa in his hammock, swaying gently from side to side, his eye stalks peering over the edge.

"We will go to the camp," Orsaa declared slowly. He pulled the strap of the canteen over his neck and crawled out of the hammock, shimmying down the tree with a vigor aging Rakata did not often show, but nearly all possessed.

Orsaa was not one for phatic communication – "hello" and "how are you" were rarely in his speech. He observed the world directly and spent words wisely so that everyone valued them like currency. But it was not intentional, only a byproduct of his character. Coming down from the trees, Revan thought the hammock might as well have been a throne.

"Not to be a bother…" Revan strained out. His breathing was shallow, irregular, and his skin was pallid.

"Our home has many beds. You have seen it. There is always one for you."

Orsaa did not say it to be kind, so Revan didn't feel wounded by it in the way others had injured him with their admiring words. There was a kinship. The Rakatans accepted him now, in some way, that put him under the umbrella of their identity. Somehow this was more palatable to him than acceptance by the Jedi and the Republic.

Revan wondered why it was the case – was it because the Elder Rakata did not patronize him? Maybe they did not, but when he was honest with himself nobody _else_ was patronizing either. For the most part the praise and kindness had been genuine. It wasn't because the Rakatans only knew him as the Revan he had become, since many others only knew that Revan too, and then he remembered that of course the Rakatans remembered him from the first time he visited them, where he had to have gained their trust and their language to acquire access to the Star Forge.

He went to sleep with that question still on his mind, lain exhausted on a raised cot in the deep recesses of the fortified camp.

%%%

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"_The bugs aren't so bad today," said the local guide to Coriff, who would not stop slapping the bloodsuckers settling in clusters on all the exposed skin. Yet Coriff noticed that the guide had balled up part of his shirt in his fist; he suspected the guide would only quietly swipe off the worst clusters._

_Four miserable days of hunt. He did not so much mind the getting wet – a driving rain was bracing and the rivers they forded were cool and mostly free of leeches, but anything that got wet remained wet and that amplified all other suffering. The lesions on his legs refused to heal and his flooded boots put spotlights on the biting pain of heel blisters. _

_Coriff wasn't worried until the first time he vomited: that was when the clock started. Thankfully it was a light cough, and the guide took a draw of his blood with the jungle kit and said there was so little of the _kabak_ in his sample anyways, nothing like the case of it which killed Diardo._

_Diardo woke up dead two nights earlier on an oxbow bend of the Kanak River, where they had pitched their tents, four klicks before it drained into the Etari and washed it with silt. Foolishly they had dumped all of their medicine into him against the recommendation of the guide, less so to keep Diardo alive than to keep the idea of Besh Squad alive. After his passing it was only Coriff, Troond, and their intrepid third who did not seem he could blister, bruise, or fall sick. Sixteen hours after that the soles of Troond's feet no longer had skin, so he'd been left in the stump pit of a toppled Dxun juggernaut tree to die._

_From seven they were down to two. The guide, grim and chipper as ever, sliced the underbrush with his vibroblade. He was singing under his breath the old Onderon dockworkers' song, first written as a lamentation, then adopted as the tune of liberation for the poor work-gangs who fled and settled in Dxun's riverine labyrinth to make their hard trades centuries ago._

"_There are fresh tracks here."_

"_Yes," and the guide kept singing._

"_He's the target. We need to follow them."_

_The guide laughed, and kept them climbing a hill far away from the mud tracks of boots that would take them to the enemy, and Coriff followed since the guide made the path. He did not have the advantage of a lifetime in these jungles to navigate pitfall and poison alone if he ever lost the tracks, nor would he have any hope of a safe return if the guide abandoned him._

_Once at the top of the hill, the guide stuck his blade in the dirt and rested on the handle like a stage performer on a cane._

"_We stop here. Look," the guide pointed a dry, gnarled finger at something in the deep foliage, "that's where you need to go. And we should wait and see."_

"_I can't see it."_

_The hill wasn't very high and it wasn't very clear, and the towering trees still drew around them like enormous arms and the lid of the canopy extinguished a great portion of light._

"_Of course you can't see it. See? The streambed is dried out. Isn't that odd?" The guide dropped his rucksack and chewed on a sliver of eel meat._

"_How does a streambed dry out in the jungle?"_

"_Season to season obviously the flow is variable. She can decide to time her lives from whatever happens in the highlands and the rivers."_

_Coriff worked slowly through the sounds of the guide's "general speak," which was a rugged creole that allowed these Dxun river men to speak to the many different groups who touched their lives, although none of them singularly with any great clarity._

_Coriff did not know if the guide was making some kind of spiritual statement or simply observing the conditions of rain and snowpack. From what he gathered listening to the guide's rare words since they first left the pier at Camp Ithor there wasn't much of a difference between the two._

"_Is it natural?"_

"_No, no, I don't believe so. That's a finger of the Kanarut and she is full year-round. I think your friend will be there soon."_

"_What makes you say that?" Coriff looked through his rifle scope, finally observing the dry streambed through the obscuring trees._

"_You are all strangers and what goes on at the source of the stream must be strange, too. He'll be down there, I promise."_

"_Well then." Coriff piled ferns and bush around him and tore up the litter to make himself a discrete observation post, "We wait for him here and I'll run him through with a good shot the second he steps into that streambed."_

"_But you'll all be there, won't you?"_

"_No," Coriff shouted, picking up the scent of a bad deal, "we had an agreement. You got your payment. Now you have to take me to the end."_

"_A deal was made to take your squad to your target. Now you know where your target will be and my job is done."_

"_You had better not leave me here. You were _my_ ally!" Coriff spat._

"_A deal was made and there is more to life than just any one thing."_

_The guide took up his bag, twirled his sword, and left the very way he came. By a hundred paces he was permanently out of view._

%%%

%%%

He was pulled to the shore by the soul of the storm-driven seas. Many of the old Rakata were there linking the nets which they would walk out to the far margins of the bay. The air was cool and wet and it touched warmly on his skin. It was the gentle breath of a lover that welcomed him and the fishermen. Wrenched from their beds by its otherworldly power, the Lehon worldsea commanded all their attentions.

Every world with an ocean seems to enact a grand hypnosis on the lives who ply those seas, exchanging ownership of their hearts with a bounty and romance that drives sentients to compose the most worshipful art in the name of great masses of water. These were cathedrals borne out of vast basins of molecules elevated from the material to the spiritual.

The Jedi had not designed Coriff to have been raised on an ocean world, nor could Revan sift through his cortical ashes for any inkling of a real one in his past. But he watched the Rakata walk with their nets, and he saw the tide, and spear of orange vaulting the horizon, and he knew that he could love the sea all the same. He did not know if an ocean world had ever been his home, but prayed one was. He laid out his robe on a tall rock.

Orsaa found him, and the two left to join the fishermen wading out to their necks. Black sand pillowed over their toes and filled the gaps whenever they stood like the gentlest sleeping foam. In some places were polished stones buried in the sand, which Orsaa pointed out by memory, and they briskly cooled the pads of Revan's feet when he stood on them. But Revan wanted to catch up with the nets, which were stretching out into the horizon then.

"Don't move. Wait a moment," said Orsaa. The sun glowed on his face. Even he was affected deeply by the dawning.

Revan waited, and after a few moments of being still, schooling fish in groups of twos and threes darted around his toes and nibbled at the flakes of dead skin, distracted from the morning bounty they gathered here to consume.

It was such a strange feeling, something halfway between a tickling sensation and a gentle massage. After a few minutes the meal had been consumed, and the schooling fish ignored his feet which felt incomparably refreshed.

"The sea renews us in ways large and small. This one, very small…"

Revan was distracted, gazing intently at the passing fish. Their colors, the shapes of their fins were a reminder of something. He replayed their courses between the stones and corals over in his head. Then he looked up, and Orsaa was already going towards the nets again. Revan stomped through the surf with high knees to catch up.

"Orsaa! I think I'm beginning to understand your people," Revan shouted. When the water was deep enough, his elder companion fell forward and began to swim, where Revan followed his lead.

He was cut out of rock, that Orsaa, elder among Elders. Strong arms and hands extended out of vast shoulders and he powered effortlessly through the water without using any of that strength. It was as if all that biological power, that industrial engine of muscle and blood and cells was accidental to him. In fact, in passing, he had once told Revan there was no practical difference between strength and weakness. It was an absurd rough stone of elderly mysticism, the sort of cryptic drabble Jolee Bindo would have used to brush people away when he wanted a nap, and it hurt Revan's teeth when his mind chewed on it. But the less he thought about it the better it felt, and in that time when they swam out to the nets together he thought about it the least and understood it the most.

And then Revan realized why he felt at home among the Rakatans. Why their generosity and goodwill to him didn't seem so much like piteous scraps laid before a beggar. It was because, at their core, they were incredulous to the world's extravagant narratives. Revan meant nothing to them. So little meant anything to them, that they were some of the most free people Revan had ever seen.

These Rakatans were the somber epilogue of legends, empires, wars of such titanic stakes and intensity that it could have dwarfed the Mandalorian Wars five, maybe ten times over. Lying in that rain shadow, how could the prodigal knight be any more than a single drop? What was a legend to the Rakata but a taste that had grown bland?

New sea was cloven under his hands, the sweet temptation of the bubbling scum of water pushed to each side inviting him with half-lidded eyes and a single curling finger to live at the edge of the present, hewing into an unknown future and a world utterly meaningless and full of possibility.

Revan swam fast but that split-second of relief swam faster – it was at the edge of his fingers until it melted into the water. The house of his escapism had no walls, and the first recollection of his name had called it out. He was no Rakata. He didn't belong in their world or answer to their world's rules. Revan was accountable to the civilization up above him, the fleet in the sky, not these fishermen in the cove.

When they arrived, Revan stood with Orsaa on his toes, their chins barely above the water, following the edge of the western net walking towards the eastern net, which would soon meet and be drawn to the beach. He wondered if he was learning the right lessons and if he could ever be enough of a man to live by them.

They walked to the shore and watched the schools of fish realize there was no escape.

"Just like you Revan, the Rakata are imprisoned by the past. Our ancestors obeyed only their desires, and the echoes of their lives dominated by the lust of an empire stretch into the future. It is like a net they have cast out, flying over our heads, that we have not outrun for hundreds of generations. Rakata cannot be what they want to be, for we imagine no futures. My people wear costumes cut out of the fabric of our history."

A hundred fishermen brought in their nets like soldiers on the march. Revan had not passed through so much in his life that stuck to him. Water rolls down the feathers of seabirds, and the germ of sentiment most often rolled down Revan's shoulders before it could sprout. Lehon was revealing itself as a weed to him. It clung to him, and he felt the roots digging into seams of muscle and bone. He could show his face here: the Rakata would not strike it, and all his intimacy was irrevocably exposed to it, feeling dense foliage breathe inside him, heartbeats like the tide.

"Your world's got me at a disadvantage." Revan traced the tips of his fingers over the water trembling and peaking in the breeze. "All I can imagine is the escape. All of the simplicity. I want to shrink down to the size of this planet. Revan…. Revan's so much bigger…"

He looked over and realized for the first time that Orsaa had not even bothered to change. His robe's pelvic flap trailed through the water, thoroughly drenched and stuck to the tail flap. Orsaa did not appear to care.

"You believe that Revan is too big for you to hold. Is he?"

Orsaa did not often ask questions. Revan's instinct was to reify the occasion by cross-examining it; at the blush his mind raced for subtlety and conditions to make his thought worth thinking. But Orsaa's silence struck him. Was _he_ ever so loud on the inside? He was one of the natural geniuses, the kind born out of storm gales standing in the blind spot of mystery, ever at their flanks, exposing their weaknesses. Anyone could think hard, Revan supposed, like throwing waves of infantry at a fortification. But how should he find himself on the pleasant forest trail like Orsaa, appearing at the side door or the hidden path not by intent, but of natural consequence of having the right flavor of mind?

"Revan was a man," said Orsaa.

"Yes, he was, and he is. But it isn't as if I'm just Revan. He's a book that I'm reading, or maybe you could say that he's a joke everyone is in on but me. If I _was_ Revan, would I have to spend any mental real estate on it? When I was just another man, when I was Coriff, I didn't have to think about it at all. I was Coriff, and what I did was what Coriff did. There's… there's got to be a difference."

"This is a difficult question."

Between the nets and out into the open ocean hurried scores of fish, which the fishermen made no attempt to interrupt. By the time they were on shore at least half of the catch had fled, and even on the shore were the packs of children making a game of collecting all of the largest fish and throwing every other one back into the water.

Thousands of years ago the Rakata faced nothing in nature or the stars that could impede their growth. Every world they could reach became a client. All the kings and emperors and chancellors who lived so long without hammer-shaped dreadnoughts in their skies were put to the sword – their successors were made satraps who fed their new suzerains' gluttonous appetite for slaves, treasure, food, and ore. Rakata gorged and ate their fill and killed and conquered, and when the hyper-hedonism of absolute dominion could no longer excite them they turned increasingly on themselves. Bloodsport and political intrigue – these were adaptations of bored gods, not acts of necessity.

Feeding themselves atop a mountain of plenty on thrones velveted with the flesh of the enslaved the Rakata grew sickly. Worlds bearing their weight cracked, and shattered. Rape turned plains into deserts and oceans into salt flats while the subject races died en masse for the vainglorious architecture of their masters – the Star Forge had survived twenty thousand years, what other innumerable leviathans had not?

Their weapon – the Force – sickened them. It was the river of their summed psyche where they bathed in power, and in bathing, they poisoned it with the offal of their annihilated souls. A corrupted, sickly people, detested, burning their world down around them until the river did not flow like it used to. It was an ironic reflection of their obsession for stimulation – more and more they reached for the Force, and more and more it came to them faintly, twisted, darkened, until one day it did not come at all: a slave-taker summoned lightning at a rebelling father, and the father saw a palm and no lightning, and the Infinite Empire was mortally wounded.

Rebellion, plague, and civil war forced a race of galactic emperors back to a single lonely rock, and millions more bled on its shores before their corpse stilled. It was an obliteration so vast that the remainder were reduced to a prehistoric way of life – or perhaps a facsimile of their prehistory that was the only refuge the survivors could imagine.

Now they let many fish go, taking care to release the largest ones, so that every year the stock by the coast of their islands would thrive and return to the same feeding grounds and keep their generous size. The unspoken beauty of it had a subtly growing intensity. Yes, there had been an empire in the stars which left no great expanse untouched, but here in a little cove, the progeny of that vicious bloodline were living in flagrant disobedience of their heritage.

"Revan was just a man," the Jedi said, wringing the water out of his undergarments – there appeared to be no sense of civilized cowardice towards the body among the Elder Rakata, and for that matter nobody sought to correct him when he reached for the hem, raising a brow at Orsaa in ask of permission. "One man. Was a man, _is_ a man. Maybe he is bigger than me, or I just have to hold two men, or perhaps I'm one man, but one that I can't recognize. But all I can do about it are… man-sized things, eh?"

Orsaa chuckled and searched for his favored sunbathing rock, his robes a damp ball in his hands. The women were starting the breakfast fires. "Perhaps you are right, troubled Jedi. Even the greatest _daritha _has but two hands and two eyes."

Orsaa glanced at Revan when he heard no response, and the margins of his lips crinkled into a rare smile. "That is to say, some questions are for time and action, not thoughts."

"No, no, I got it, I just… I remember my Rakata well enough. That word you said, _emperor_, is it really _daritha_?"

"It is," Orsaa sighed, as he always did when dragged into meaningless questioning. "What of it?"

"Darth… _daritha_…" Revan mumbled. "I must've adopted the title from your language. _Darth_, for a ruler of Sith."

"Hm, I think it is not so. You have your word, _em-pier-or_, you simply would have used that. But not so much flair."

"Are you saying I was dramatic?"

"All Jedi I have seen take themselves too seriously, most of all the Jedi who believe they do not. You must have desired a new word – _darr_ is ours for victory, and _tah_ for death."

"Is that so?" Revan had replaced his underwear and tied his robes at the waist, enjoying the glow of the morning sun on his chest. "Can you tell me anything else about him? Me?"

"No."

"Why?"

"It is pointless."

Revan crossed his arms. "Pointless to you. But I want to know."

"Imagine this, Revan. There is an infinity of knowledge in our universe. Will you spend a finite life trying to chase it all down?"

"Some knowledge is far more relevant than other knowledge."

"An estimation you make with limited knowledge. These words are a waste, and you should bring me a fish."

…when the fish are done, Revan thought to himself, which was an obvious piece of information Orsaa left off, like he did with anything he felt his conversation partner could piece together on their own. Revan knew he was still stuck on that step with everything _else_ the old Rakata had said, and it made the retort dying on his lips feel even more futile, and so fuming, he punched a little gust of sand into the air with the Force out of frustration. Of course he was going to bring that fish to Orsaa.

Nevertheless he counted himself lucky to have the ear of such a fascinating and incisive acquaintance. Revan stormed off, but he stormed off feeling enlightened even by the things he _didn't _get.

Rakatan family groups, loose by any standard, existed only as far as the walls of their compounds. Out on the sand they were entirely dissolved. Friends joined with friends and the married often abandoned their spouses and the unmarried flocked to their young lovers. Children flitted in mobs from fire to fire, most often settling with an old patriarch or matriarch rated on the laxness of their discipline.

The young were not much like the old. Elder senses of neighborly curiosity had been dulled and anesthetized by an epoch of internecine anguish. This was overall a good attitude to cultivate for the Elder camps which lined the coast as pearls on a string, ever prone to being assaulted in a single morning and losing everything when driven into the sea, should their vigilance have ever waned. Yet the children of the Elders, like children on every planet of every race in the galaxy were their best hope, acutely curious and possessing their innate geniality unfiltered. Every cohort of children was this way until they matured into their camps' cynicism, realizing why after nights sequestered in the citadels the tide pools ran red.

Revan was waved over by a familiar face. Ll'awa stood up in a cluster of children and young adults and called to the Jedi. "Revan," he said, handing him a fish to prepare, "you are welcome."

The once Dark Lord peered left and right cartoonishly, spying on how the children prepared the filets for preservation. He shouldn't have been so surprised by their skill and the natural assembly line to which even the youngest children expertly contributed. The fish were bled into little sand pits that flowed to the opposite side of the camp, feeding into a strong seaward current, and the bled fish were descaled, gutted, and cut so quickly with little vibro-knives that it brought the famous Alderaanian fishmongers to mind.

Reminded by the memory of swimming out to meet the nets, Revan juggled a fish head in his hands, turning it over and staring into the bulging, lifeless eyes. In a flash he grabbed a whole unprepared fish and held it up to the sun, the light playing rainbows of vibrant color in its tail and scales.

"It's a Corellian royal pearl tail… is this a native fish?"

Ll'awa stared at him quizzically for a moment until he grasped the nature of the question. "This is a native fish, so far as you can trust the oral histories. I only asked for Rakatan genetic data from the temple computers, but perhaps if you're lucky to find it there could be a nature survey in its databanks."

"Well, it makes sense, doesn't it? If your ancestors engineered Kashyyyk, why wouldn't they introduce species elsewhere?"

"Don't let it just sit there, it's a juicy one!" A child complained. Revan acknowledged him and set to work descaling and gutting. All the while he imagined those fillets sitting on his plate at a restaurant off-duty or special ration nights on Carida.

"I know exactly how this tastes," he kept saying to himself.

He thought back to his ruminations on peaceful little Lehon and imagined that twenty thousand years ago there had been a Rakatan just like him, standing upon a placid, untainted Corellia while the fleet camps and zoologists swarmed over ignoble little bands of humans. That Rakatan wanted Corellia to be a forgotten jewel in his own pocket, just like Revan would see his world in turn millennia later. In fact, Corellia might have been Revan's homeworld for all he had forgotten, and maybe Ll'awa was that Rakatan's descendent as Revan was the descendant of his human tribal friend.

Frustrated and impatient, the same child who scolded him before grabbed the finished fillets out of Revan's hands and threw them into the pan over the fire, having deemed it tasty-looking enough for breakfast instead of preparation in the brine pot for smoking.

"Speaking of genetic data," Ll'awa said slowly and diplomatically, these words prepared long in advance, "I've assembled a picture of whom amongst our kin might be touched by the Force."

"Is that so?" Revan put down his tools.

"Indeed, indeed. They're quite skilled," Ll'awa tacked in a new direction. "Some of our best monks among them. But I don't think we've shown you, have we?"

"Have you shown me what?"

"Ah yes. Well, proudly I can say that my son is chief among them. Here, Tesshok, gather them and show our guest."

He prodded his son gently who had knelt beside him, who dawdled for a moment looking bashful, whether out of socially prescribed ritual hesitation or genuine discomfort to be under the judgement of a living, breathing Jedi.

Tesshok walked between the fires and took one or two of the men with him on each visit, and the fish-work slowed to a crawl once it became clear what was about to begin. Those few who didn't notice were hushed and urged to set their work aside. Whatever he was about to witness, Revan realized, its dignity was not violated even by the necessity of food.

Tesshok stood at the head of some two dozen men in four lines – the evil, drowsy word "platoon" fastening itself to the back of Revan's mind – and bowed at the hip, fully, until his face was parallel to the ground, and all his men followed suit.

With a shout Tesshok turned his head to the left and crouched, and with each following shout he counted the time – in exact martial unity, he and the men exploded into an orchestrated flow of steps into kicks, often very fast, followed by wide chops of the arms, twisting hands and rigid punches. Obviously this was an art, and to an uninitiated eye it was unclear what it expressed, Revan's experience in the martial arts saw him piecing together the letters and syllables each movement spoke aloud. There was an audio element to it beyond the time-keeping shout: chops and kicks were often accompanied with a clap as some part of the body impacted precisely against another.

There was an emerging syllabary with the repetitions and the modifications of repetitions, where some moves changed in form or sequence with others that were new. Revan struggled to identify these patterns and was excluded just as much by their novelty as the shocking impression that the speed and uniformity had on him. It had scarce been two minutes when the demonstration concluded and a sweat was breaking out on his neck just imagining repeating the actions himself. They were like temple practitioners of an elite martial art.

The performers dropped all of their cohesion and bowed in every direction – to each other, to friends and family, to Tesshok, and to Revan. Tesshok dismissed his men and was in a moment knelt beside the fire once more, blade in hand, stripping the scales from a chubby little fish.

"We all carry on this art, Revan," said Ll'awa.

"But _these_ ones…"

The old leader smiled. "Exactly. These are our prospective Force users, and what you just saw is how the knowledge of our old skills has been passed down, even though the power they cast have long departed us."

"We would like to go back with you to the Jedi Temple," said Tesshok, speaking quickly and averting his eyes from the fish knife. "We want to study with the Jedi and learn the Force again.

%%%

Hello there dear reader!

Just a brief author's note.

I am switching military branches and going active duty. I'll be in San Diego without any technology until about early January of 2021.

I have been working hard on rewrites and new chapters in between COVID chaos and my job.

I wanted to finish rewriting the story before I posted new chapters, but I would rather leave you all with something than another few months of darkness.

So, here are two chapters! You have finished them if you are reading this.

I appreciate all of my readers and reviewers more than you could possibly know. This passion project is enormously important to me and I am going to love the months and years I get to spend bringing it to life.

Also I got married. She agreed to marry me _knowing_ I was writing a Star Wars fan novel.

If that's not love, I don't know what is.

Have a good day, and thank you for reading!


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